Here is a quote from Mediapost email, paraphrasing from an article from BusinessWeek: The Difficulties Bartz Faces at Yahoo:
“As Sanford Bernstein analyst Jeffrey Lindsay said, “We see no growth path forward. The only thing that’s going to excite investors is a transformational move, and that could take months or quarters.” Indeed, new CEO Carol Bartz admitted as much during a conference call with reporters. She said she needed time to talk to more people inside the company about what direction to take it in. Investors are unlikely to give her much time.”
The last sentence irks me:
“Investors are unlikely to give her much time.”
I think this is a systemic problem that is wrong with how we incent businesses to function. It breeds short term focus and doesn’t let companies do the things they need to do, especially if they are going to take months or even years.
Sure, I’d be pissed too if I were losing millions or billions on stock price. But there must be a way to stop companies from reacting to pressure from investors to deliver short term results in order to bring great long term growth to the company, and before investors demand the management team to be fired…?!?!?