Microsoft, Yahoo, and Not Getting What You Want (in the short-term)

July 29th, 2009 by Andrew Swenson in Biz

So it’s nearly official—Microsoft and Yahoo will partner for online search. Yahoo will finally have the tech under the hood to make search meaningful, and Microsoft will finally have the sales force they need to gain ad sales (see ZDNet’s breakdown).

Of course, as AdAge and Marketing Pilgrim reported, neither partner will get exactly what they want—Yahoo wanted upfront payment and results promises, and Microsoft wanted to buy Yahoo.

All collaboration, whether it’s between businesses or within business departments, is like that. You don’t always get what you want in the short term.

Microsoft and Yahoo had to work out the thorny details of who is going to do what, and the even thornier details of who gets paid what. But the long-term benefits of working together far outweigh the challenges: they’ve now got 30% of the market share to go up against Google.

Even at the project level within companies, short-term give and take has to happen. Far too often there is far too little collaboration between departments. Take the marketing/sales split for example:

Marketing and sales often have disparate data systems.
Marketing and sales have different needs.
Marketing and sales blame each other for failure (e.g. “you didn’t close!” and “your leads are junky!”).
Worst of all, many times sales and marketing have different goals.

I realize this isn’t a radical idea, but in the process of balancing the unique needs of each department, it will be necessary for both to give up absolute control. It’s a matter of giving up control in short term for benefits in the long term.

In collaboration, sometimes the toughest thing is take our eyes off immediate needs to see the big picture.