Do You Yahoo?
At first the slogan was an obnoxious YAHOOOOOO! shout. Then it was a pleading question. Now...the second CEO in as many years is getting her walking papers as the once dominant search company was challenged and then replaced by a new upstart known as Google. But even before Yahoo came onto the scene there was "Altavista," "Excite" and even the primitave "Yahoo Directory."
Though Yahoo remains one of the largest search engines today, with almost 600 million unique visitors, it is rapidly fading into obscurity as it's board frantically searches for a new direction.
This is a particularly heart wrenching tale for me. Jerry Yang (Co-Founder and former CEO) is a Phi Kappa Psi. I also created my first independent (read non AOL) account through Yahoo.
But what does this heart wrenching story of a former Phi Psi have to tell us about Greek Life and leadership on college campuses today?
Take a look at yourself, your chapter, your community, and your campus. Where do you sit? Pretty high and mighty I might imagine? Maybe you're pushing "top tier" membership numbers with all of the best Greek Week pairings? Or maybe you win a lot of awards? Perhaps you have a lot of famous alumni/ae who speak on your behalf at University functions? Maybe you're just active in your campus community and have a lot of fun together, right?
Or maybe you're none of that.
Maybe you're looking at one more risk management hearing before you're in the Dean of Student's office defending yourself at a "show cause" hearing.
Either way, there may be a lot of reasons for where you're at. It's often times tempting to chalk up success or failure to campus climate, behavior of advisers, a particularly talented (or lethargic) recruitment chair, or maybe it was just a cloudy day and all of your members were bummed out.
Regardless, I would ask you to do what the New York Times is asking of the Yahoo Board of Directors. Don't blame the winds. Blame the ship. Take a good hard look at yourself, your leadership, and your chapter and start with yourself.
I know in these past few months I've had to do a lot of soul searching and I haven't always liked the answers I've come up with even though things are going well.
Regardless of where your chapter, your community, or your campus are at, ask yourself this: Why are we doing the things we're doing. Are we achieving what we want to be achieving? What do we gain by being successful?
Success, in and of itself, just gets you to the next benchmark be it more impressive numbers, a shinier plaque room, or a bigger chapter house. Innovation, learning, and making an impact are what creates lasting legacies. It's what separates the super large Yahoos of the world from the Googles from the up and coming social media outlets that are bringing facts from a global to the hyper local perspective.
Let us not ask if we're still relevant but why we're going to continue to be relevant.
Let's ask how we're going to make ourselves relevant and not how we're going to pass the buck on.
For the complete New York Times article, go to:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/07/technology/carol-bartz-yahoos-chief-executive-is-fired.html?_r=1&hp
