"Who Moved My Cheese?"
AOL at this moment is not in a good shape in the market it operates in (this is no secret). I feel there’s a lot of potential in the organization to get back to the heights it enjoyed not long before (in internet time, it was loooooooong ago). What are the chances for the revival? It all depends on the management. At this time the management doesn’t have the capacity. Unfortunately there is no “Steve Jobs” who left AOL to come back and plan a revival. Steve Case did you say? Well, same first names don’t mean anything. He doesn’t have the same persona as that of Jobs.
There definitely was an attempt to revive the company. I feel management forgot the need for strategy. Management thought they had one. “Good luck, bad luck, who knows” is not a strategy, nor turning around 180o and facing other side is. A weak leadership created powerhouses across organizations that had their own agenda and everyone got involved and thought they had strategy. Technical people should not be involved in making business decisions or setting direction.
AOL Broadband: Tried partnering with Covad and Verizon (?) to provision broadband ended in losing money for every customer they signed up. So the strategists didn’t do their homework before they got into this venture?
AOL TotalTalk: VoIP initiative was a big blunder. It seemed like AOL wanted to get its share of the lucrative VoIP market. They thought they could bundle Skype and VoIP phone features in one. This attempt was made assuming they got the broadband subscribers (I doubt if they had capacity to make this assumption). I feel AOL was not in a position to compete in highly competitive market and didn’t price it right.
AOL MusicNow: How can whoever got involved in this venture (to buy failed business from Circuit City) ignore iPod which dominates MP3 market? There are two options if you can’t fight: join hands or run away. AOL opted for the later by winding up the business (selling it off to Napster). Sure there were challenges dealing with DRM and Apple. This is the homework that should have been done before they made the move.
MapQuest: This is one of the lifelines for AOL. Lack of vision resulted in falling behind to competition. This is the only cash cow AOL has that has the potential to grow and lead. Poor decisions and basking in limelight without thinking about the future resulted in its catching up with competition. It had the potential to be on every GPS system, but because of poor decisions and lack of vision resulted in lost opportunities.
Netscape: Do I have to say anything about this 900-pound gorilla? I hope someone would realize at least now and perform the last rites of pulling the plug and putting it to sleep.
AOL Products: There are wide range of products: AIM, Mail, Calendar, Address Book, Parental Controls, etc. One right move was to strategically market Parental Control product that AOL prides in. But, there too AOL didn’t study the competition. McAfee and Symantec who are the big players in the industry are finding it hard in the OS market dominated by not so secure Windows, as Microsoft has its solution for its own crap (this is a different topic for another day). Parental Controls that were part of Classic Client were a hit not because it is state of the art (in technical perspective it is!!) solution but for the non-technical parents who liked it as it came bundled with their dial-up service.
If you look at individual products most of them are inferior to the competition. They lack in features, technology and soon would lose their dominance to the competition.
My view is that these are not state of the art products! Disagree? Then how did AOL amass so many subscribers and has a huge market share? Let me explain. AOL had the first mover’s advantage when it entered the market and once it picked up the critical mass, it dominated. Other examples:
• Hotmail has over 250 Million users. Microsoft made a quick move and grabbed the opportunity by buying it and integrated MSN chat with Hotmail and created the effect of critical mass.
• Dell is market leader in selling desktop computers online. One reason is first mover’s advantage. It’s a different story after that, optimized business processes and cut down costs and yada, yada, yada.
Unlike mobile phone market where you can call anyone on any network, online messaging/chatting is different; critical mass played significant role and AOL definitely has advantage in this area. I feel it wouldn’t be not long from now when mobile phones and messaging converge (the fight already started), AIM might lose its dominance unless AOL makes a strategic move. Is anyone at AOL thinking about this at all? I doubt it. Even today, I feel that the management is content based upon the subscriber numbers and the brand name and clueless about the future direction.
I didn’t touch other brand names AOL owns (Tegic, love.com, Moviefone, etc.), as I don’t have details about how they operated.
I hope this answers the question “Who Moved My Cheese?” and I apologize for the long answer.
End Note:
Reusing the title of the famous book “Who Moved My Cheese?” by Spencer Johnson M.D. If you are in between jobs, this is a must read.
I didn’t write this as vindictive act to demoralize or take a jab at AOL that laid me off. This is an attempt to express my sincere opinion and view which I couldn’t express while I was an employee (and a reason to hold it until today, Feb 15th, to publish it).
stop criticizing
I have one thing to say, you are out of there. Why didn't you try when you were there? I look at you are trying to take your frustration and this reflects your negative attitude.
Hari, please try to be positive and don't worry about the past. You are no longer an employee, just move on.
This is corporate America; business makes decisions that are not right or not so wrong as they are right for the business or the people making those decisions :)
Take it easy my friend.
Have Fun!
My .02 cents
AOL is typical of many
AOL is typical of many companies who have adopted the short team view of the world. By that I mean:
1. Worry only about the next quarters profit. If it can be made bigger by killing future research do it.
2. Treat employees as a comodity. When I first began working employees were valued by the company. You wanted the right people and wanted to invest in training them. This attitude is almost completely gone in most companies.
3. Don't try to keep products up to date. Milk them for all the worth then kill them
4. Don't listen to the employees if you are upper management. You know what is best for your pocket book, that will be best for the company.
5. If you are upper management make sure you get yours first. You are a superstar and deserve that kind of money.
We need to get back to looking farther out into the future. Today is important, but so is our future.
End Notes:
Reusing the title of the famous book “Who Moved My Cheese?” by Spencer Johnson M.D. If you are in between jobs, this is a must read.
I didn’t write this as vindictive act to demoralize or take a jab at AOL that laid me off. This is an attempt to express my sincere opinion and view which I couldn’t express while I was an employee (and a reason to hold it until today, Feb 15th, to publish it).
I believe the problem stems
I believe the problem stems from lack of leadership and ownership and that no plan exists.
1. The only people worried about the next quaterly profits are those that are directly affected.
2. Each exectutive and Sr manager is looking to further his own projects. So all projects are important and all projects must be completed.
3. The CEO does not prioritize and kill bad projects. So they hire like mad.
4. The Execs throw parties to celebrate. They celebrate everything, failures, projects that don't launch, projects that continually missied thier dealines, projects that are not adopted by the customer. This reenforces bad behaviour by everyone.
5. The Execs complain that they need more staff for all the projects and begin hiring again. At the end of the year, you end up with too many employees, too many projects- mostly bad.
6. The layoffs begin. Now it's a 3 or more month mad scrable to justify your job, axe as many folks as are required to save your job, but but not enough to topple your empire.
7. The CEO doesn't have enough organizational skills to look at all the projects that remain and decide which ones are important. He simply lets his staff fight it out in a mad dash to see who can grab up the most staff and projects.
8. The CEO wonders why no work has been done in the last three months and why moral is bad.
9. The managers gather everyome to remind them that they are the ones chosen to take the company into the future. Oh, sorry about your friends, hope it was not too stressful.
10. start the next year and go back to 1.