Tim Armstrong Communication

565 Words2 Pages

he first example of poor communication came in August 2017, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong announced that AOL would be reducing the number of Patch websites (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.. Soon afterward, Armstrong spoke to 1,000 employees on a conference call that was intended to boost morale and discuss the future. What happened instead was far from moral e-boosting.

Armstrong ended up firing Patch’s Creative Director (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site., Abel Lenz, in front of everyone. Four days after he fired Lenz, Armstrong sent AOL employees an apology for his behavior. Unfortunately, rather than using it as an opportunity to take ownership, in a direct, heartfelt way, Armstrong missed the mark (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.. He made excuses for his behavior rather than owning up to it and sharing what he learned.

The second example of bad communication came in February, when the head of HR at Yahoo sent employees the internal memo leaked around the world. It told Yahoo employees that telecommuting or working from home would soon no longer be an option and that those who worked remotely must relocate to an office or quit.

The communication around the policy sparked a strong negative reaction, and it wasn’t difficult to see why: a poorly constructed memo (Links to an …show more content…

But two months after the memo leaked, Marissa Mayer finally broke her silence (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site.. At a Los Angeles conference for human resource professionals, Mayer began speaking about Yahoo’s culture, but after a few minutes interrupted herself to address what she referred to as “the elephant in the room.” She refused to waver on the policy, explaining that some of the best ideas come from in-person collaboration and that the in-office policy was “wrongly perceived as industry

Open Document