Looking over your shoulder

We had to analyze Yahoo! Canada strategy in our FIT practicum. It’s been quite fascinating reading all of the articles, and understanding the whole new media landscape. Our task is to define a strategy for Yahoo! Canada in the Web 2.0 environment.

I stumbled upon an interesting piece of journalism in one of the articles “Then, on Aug. 19, 2004, Google went public. According to some former Yahoos, that was a turning point for the company's culture as well. Yahoo became a company obsessed with Google rather than one looking to make the next leap on the Net. "Yahoo became super-paranoid," says one former search manager. "We switched from charting our own course to looking over our shoulder."

That last line struck a chord with me on a personal level. It’s so easy to constantly compare and look over your shoulder. It’s so easy to just take one little peak isn’t it? It appeals to our insecurities. We feel the need to look back and see who’s catching up to us, who will overtake us. We also have the tendency to look around and assess the competition constantly.

We also look over our shoulder at the past and assess what we did wrong and examine our mistakes and all the paths we did not take, and examine the ones we have taken.

My biggest takeaway is to stop looking over my shoulder, and focus on the road ahead. The past is behind me, and the competition? Well, they will always be there, but are they relevant to my goals?