the top of the four seasons in san francisco and another is in palo alto which is really near where stanford campuses. the very wealthy people in palo alto, she has done this thing that she has decided

to buy some of the homes rounder to make sure they stay nice and pleasant. >> host: how did she get to yahoo? >> guest: this was a big upset. yahoo was able to hire someone like her. she came back -- 1st, let's talk quickly. this will take up the 1st hundred 50 pages of the 300 plus page book. what i want to explore is yahoo is in bad shape. my they need someone like her. it had gone through. after that there was an interim ceo. after that there was a

permanent ceo. scott thompson was actually pushed out of the company. all that happened within the period of the year. and it was so tumultuous that there was a lot of expectation for the company's assailants higher this person. he has a great name. he has a has a vision for what to do with the company. that have been the expectation. one july day all of a sudden she was hired as the ceo of yahoo. so one reason why got into it. basically what happens is in 2,011 yahoo fired. she was in new york. she gets a phone call famous

for her aggressive tone. sounds like your reading from a script. didn't have the guts to actually talk to me. she was fired. it was very public and well-known. meanwhile one of the longtime confidants club person who had helped her career long, he really made or something of a celebrity coming from the world of politics. along with obviously playing more role. anyway, so he said to her, you know, i think you would be a great fit. and said i thought about

that, it's a good idea, but there is no way i'm doing that. the reason she said that is over the many years yahoo have a notoriously bad board of directors, people who continued to hire talented ceos but they were really bad that for the company. people who prevented the company for making sound decisions. there was a moment where yahoo had gotten a big offer. you got this very large offer from microsoft. and kind of just pushing it off and said they would not do it. it was because of the board of directors in many ways. and so it's just a notoriously bad board of directors. will myers did not know till

, the firing in august and september, what she did not know was across the country in new york there is a hedge fund manager, another chapter in the book. the job was to be an activist investor. he goes in and buys large stakes of public entrances to the boards, i am now a big donor in your company. i have some ideas for how we should be running the company very differently. and so by the way, if you don't do what i say i will go to the other shareholders that will get you fired. meaning basically public companies are shareholder democracies. a set of directions. and so i had over the summer

taken a 5 percent stake. he wants the disaster and thought this was an underperforming asset, someone could be hired. so geared up, lots of money and lost what is called an activist campaign against the board and ceo. and really pushed someone like morrison meyer. the board did not listen. they went out and hired the president of paypal which is another division of ebay. they hire this guy named scott thompson. actually thompson when in come of the strange plans for what to do with the company and he just sort of

indicated that he had never been in the media business and it was just like yahoo once again hiring a once talented executive. and sort of said, let's keep this proxy war going and eventually found the thompson had allowed for a long time there to be mistakes. one might say thompson lied on his resume about having a computer science degree. did not offer a computer science degree. his method of convincing other shareholders, writing a scathing letter to a letter of mass distraction is what he told. after this war between download and scott thompson, going on for quite some time

, may 2012 and scott thompson, the ceo the mood of each executive start to change. and what has happened is the reporter said the demo but just published his latest letter any accuse scott thompson of lying on his resume. in the scene the bolts upright and starts dealing with. he did not survive. still has a lovely career going, but he did not survive his job at yahoo. so left yahoo with the ceo. they promoted the scott levinson person. had this plan for yahoo.

and instead of doing that, instead of hiring levinson this man who had been imagining he would be on the board in short order space bar what kind of ceo yahoo needed. and then met with a famous investor in the creator of netscape who told both download and another future board member of yahoo. he told what you need is when you have a tech company like yahoo apart for a car company, the product, you really need a technical leader, someone has an understanding of how products are made. places like amazon are such great companies.

and so they got it in their heads that what they need to do is go find someone like larry page or mark zucker berg with an understanding of the real native understanding. and you know it was a pretty all-star list. the launch many products. she is to talk about it. google products so difficult that was google's goal. and so at the top of the list the thought it would be possible.

they hiredthey hired a recruiter who reached out to her. stunned to learn that he was not interested in the job because he successfully put himself on the board. so she was interested in his job. she is the best preparer in the world. she knows that she needs to have data understood, then she will have it understood and be able to be convincing. so she went and. while there was some reluctance to hire because she had not run a division with a profit or loss statement but eventually they were able to convince the rest of the board that she would be the right higher. is sort of shocked everyone. and a little piece of

information about it, she was five months pregnant. a 37 -year-old woman who was pregnant and ceo massive internet company. how would she do? >> host: nicholas carlson, from page 300 of your book the honeymoon between merissa marr and yahoo. >> guest: that's right. there was an incredible amount of optimism. she often took advantage of it. all the optimism was worthwhile. from the 2,008 presidential election, a poster made of barack obama brazen primary colors.

on the bottom it says hope. when meyer arrived in july 2012 there were posters of her gun in the same style with the word over another anything. there was that sort of excitement in the company. the founder, one of the founders met her at the front door and rolled out of purple carpet for her to enter. she comes in the company and your office is full of cupcakes because she is a renowned cupcake enthusiast for that is the impression of the world has gotten from media coverage. but anyway, the room was full of cupcakes and balloons. on her answering machine calls from the white house, j.p. morgan, ceos and celebrities congratulating her on the job.

and so there was this humongous enthusiasm. and she did great right away. the things that she did that were incredible, she brought an increased level of transparency. the way that yahoo employees learned what was going on was not through the channels of communication but through reading reports by this woman we talked about. she would just -- that was actually help people knew what was going on. came in and said that newsstand. we need to do a better job communicating with employees. so it's actually sort of a common thing now, but common because companies like google have done it. the executive team, the ceo and his or her executive team said on the stage in

front of all the company employees and take questions from employees. they asked quite hard questions. and so one thing i was astounded by command you can see it's pretty common, how hard the questions were and how candid meyer wasn't answering. so she brought this level of transparency, and that alone immediately raised morale. she also did other things. in many ways she brought yahoo the parent. she has instituted. you can go they're early in the morning and stay late at night and get three meals a day. this ashas the side effect of keeping people around the office much longer. for a long time yahoo employees were out trying to make web products and apps. at the same time yahoo

executives and employees without using iphones and android's, the kind that consumers are increasingly using. she said that'sshe said that's going to have to end. she gave employees new iphones free and android phones free. it was quite a big deal for the employees. she did some things that were not exactly -- a little bit more controversial. she band working from home. employees need to come into the office. this is a creative company. the only way your going to do that is if you are bumping into people and also we have looked at some data and it looks like a lot of people working from home are not actually logging in all that much. she said that's enough. and that was very controversial. people are especially, a lot of women who argued listen,

working from home is a nice way to raise children. they were sort of offended by the fact that meyer was instituting this policy that is basically regarded as anti- woman. the policy was not nearly as controversial as it was outside. people complained that yes she was doing this, not helpful for working mothers and meanwhile she made hundreds of millions of dollars and have built a nursery in her office, literally knocked on the wall and built a nursery for her newborn child. this is a thing. so people were upset. but overall, overwhelmingly they felt that this is something that needs to be done to get us moving again. and so that is another thing that meyer did. quite a lot faster during

her year there. before she got there took you 18 months to launch a new version. thatthat was the amount of time it took. so next time they lost a new version command after that it took three months again. you know, it's kind of impressive. the way that is very different than our most ceos come in and try to turn companies. most ceos come in and say, i have a strategy. they sort of delegated out and that people pushed on the latter and draft a pyramid and that is how it gets done. we talked about her having this role like google or she was on interface review team

and she actually said okay, going to do that again. these things were being made you don't see a business celebrity ceo, and the meetings like this. there's a cinema book or she is sitting next to the product manager and she is looking at him and grills and for 45 minutes somewhere is getting his data from hawaii's making the decisions is making. it is sort of like shaking in making sure that everything is producing is good and up to her standards. so she got the place moving again doing that kind of thing. the problem was command the reason the honeymoon ended is that when meyer decided to join yahoo one of the things she talked about was that the company needed to cut costs. it needed probably silly off

people. she indicated that she would a lot of costs. a lot of people thought one of the main things i needed to do, 13,000 full-time employees and 2,000 part-timers who were called freelancers and contractors but were actually really working is much as full-time employees. and so they thought would meyer would do is take the workworkforce and reduce it down to 5,000 people. and in fact the silicon valley star investor who we mentioned before who really advocated for yahoo hiring went public say are needed to fire 10,000 people. meyer really did not want to fire people. she felt the last thing the company needed, she looked at some of the layoff plans

and thought this is a disaster. is just going to fire people regardless of their talent for regardless of the specialty. i think i could find a smarter way to reduce cost and improve the talent. so back to her google days when they had this process called objective key results. and what they were is every quarter google employees meet their manager and their manager's manager. a set of key results for the next quarter. basically how well they perform. and so yahoo had some review process. she really prioritize and emphasize this idea. she called him quarterly performance reviews. so the twist is that what we

need to do is add these people grated whatgraded what they said they would do each quarter and held accountable. take all the people on the team and grade them on a scale of one to five. and not only graded on the scale but by the way if you have a five, an average of above something like three or four your eligible for promotion and transfers. into the weeds of human resources. you know, if you manage for a couple quarters in a row having go to for example what you were not able to transfer to a new department

>> she asked her managers maybe 15 percent would get a one. in each bucket had to be a certain number. and the cause a lot of problems. in a high-performing group you have managers the believe that you had to use of failing grades to people. and this is created a lot of confusion. there been a number of studies about why it's a failed management paradigm. a lot of it has to do with the fact that people don't want to work together as much anymore. one of the is going to have to have the top grade the group. and so just in general people don't really want to

work together. they don't want to transfer to new groups because they don't necessarily know who's on the team. they don't want to switch in the middle of a quarter and in the absence of 4th. people were confused. their lives are being worsened. there qualifies. finally there are number of questions over time about being demoralized. actually when they roll it out, you sure that's a good idea? anyway -- >> host: mr. crossan, we will have to leave the rest for people who buy the book. unfortunately we are out of time.

the fight to save yahoo is the name of the book. >> three days of nonfiction books and authors. back-to-back hearings and 7:00 p.m. eastern discussing his latest book the conservative heart. >> examining the life of doctor martin luther king jr. >> martin understood for any human being was to reach a level of integrity as a long-distance runner, you have to kill something in yourself, fear. fear of session with status and wealth.

>> former senator john danforth, how faithful people can change politics. for faithful people not simple. >> a memoir about her life experiences. >> i don't think we do anybody any favors. >> a panel discussion on national review found and at 11:00 p.m. the winning world war ii.

>> why did you choose these three men? the answer is that they embodied super characteristics of courage, character, and patriotism. >> sunday night at 8:00 o'clock looking back at a turning.in world history in 1932, the rise of hitler and fdr. and 11:15 p.m. the influence machine, the usmachine, the us chamber of commerce and the corporate capture american life. >> is a reason i chose the chamber of commerce. it is because the organization really sums up the story of how we got to this place. >> watch book tv on c-span2.

>> all persons having business before the honorable supreme court of the united states draw near and give your attention. >> tonight on c-span landmark cases, one of the most divisive issues to come before the supreme court, abortion. >> decided in january. it is a case that is controversial, constantly under scrutiny. there is a question i suppose whether it ever will cease to be under scrutiny. >> wanting to terminate an unwanted pregnancy but unable to, unmarried dallas carnival worker or mccorvey agreed to be the plaintiff in 1970 case that challenge them off the question she

remain anonymous philosopher listed her as jane roe and the defendant charged with enforcing the ban was dallas county district attorney henry wade. thus. she had the baby and put it up for adoption, her case made it all the way to the supreme court. >> gone to several seeking an abortion but was refused care because of the texas law. she filed suit on behalf of herself and all those women who have in the past and the present times or in the future saw determination of termination of a pregnancy. >> discuss the court's decision, its impact in and now with our guest clerk, senior counsel with americans united for life and author of abuse of discretion with the inside story. and professor at the

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where did you get this title? >> they did not come from me. the original title, it was called epic fail. the american publisher did not like that title. he had a long conversation with my agent and that one point a shot of the internet is not the answer. so it's a good title. >> i wanted to ask you about the whole chapter. what is that? >> i am sure you have been out to silicon valley. very susceptible