The Need For Strong Leadership

There was a macabre story going around Silicon Valley in the late 90's that went like this: if you put the management teams of AOL, eBay, Amazon and Yahoo in a plane and crashed it into a mountain, the only company that would still be around in 6 months was eBay. It was less an indictment of any management team than a testament to the underlying strength of the eBay model.

I resurrect that story now because of a Tony Wolverton piece in The Street that discusses Jeff Bezos' recent helicopter crash and the fact that Bezos is "more akin to Martha Stewart than to Meg Whitman". The analyst community quoted in the piece believes that the company is much less dependent upon Bezos than the Martha Stewart analogy suggests.

I would disagree. AOL has already proven that it was highly dependent on Case, Pittman, et al and the lack of their focus on AOL post Time Warner merger has a lot to do with where AOL stands right now. Yahoo's recent turmoil is more a function of the founding team's sticking too long to the original vision. But in both cases, the need for a strong team with an ability to shift strategy in changing markets was very aptly demonstrated.

Amazon has a good model that's working well right now. But without the strong leadership of Jeff Bezos, it would be just another online retailer.