Define 2-3 things Yahoo! can excel at, and sell&#x2F;spin off everything else.  For anything not sellable&#x2F;spinnable, reassign staff where possible and layoff otherwise.  Do it once and in the beginning when you have the honeymoon with wall street and the employees.  Explain it is painful but necessary for the health of the company.  Then pour all the resources into being great in the top 2-3 things at most.<p>Doing that sounds cold, but it would buy you more time to right the ship generally.   Small layoffs over 2-3 years causes way more moral issues.  Like making significant changes to long standing working environments&#x2F;policies. If you have to, do it early and once, don&#x27;t keep ripping off band-aids or morale will be shit.<p>Acquire only a company that is either #1 or #2 in their market and can help extend the 2-3 things you defined up front.  If the company&#x2F;product isn&#x27;t related then don&#x27;t make the acquisition.<p>She should also have not gotten so involved with micro managing every group and detail.  Hire the right team on the executive staff that sees the vision and can get their staff on board and lead them not manage them.  Help support your staff in any way they ask but do not interfere by getting involved with developer interviews or other processes like that, it will only serve to slow down the process and cause failure not prevent it.  Not to mention it screams out that you do not trust even the people you brought in, so then why should their direct reports trust them.