halleffect's definitions

the Mayer effect

When you take over a company or become the CEO and the culture has become complacent, lacks motivation, and no change is possible, so the incoming manager fires and replaces key people, but doesn't cut deep enough or replace enough people, so new people cannot make positive changes and are sucked into the complacency. Coined when Marissa Mayer took over Yahoo! but she could not get the ship to move in the right direction because the culture resisted. Hardened attitudes limit leadership.

We tried to fix the business but the Mayer effect took over.

by halleffect December 10, 2025