Why Yahoo’s Bartz should quit her boards

By Adam Lashinsky, Editor at Large

Pattie Sellers and I are having a debate about board memberships. She intelligently argues that boards are good, especially for women, who have a disadvantage at the highest reaches of corporate America.

Still, you’ll know Carol Bartz, the incoming CEO of Yahoo (YHOO), is super serious about her massive task at hand if she immediately drops off the boards of Cisco (CSCO), where’s she’s the lead independent director; Intel (INTC) a board post she awkwardly shares with outgoing Yahoo President Sue Decker; and NetApp (NTAP).

I totally get that outside boards help the individual as well as, at least a little, their company. However, when you’re in crisis mode, which is what Bartz’s situation at Yahoo will be, there’s simply no time for anything else. There’s no room for a single 200-hour-a-year commitment other than the one company where you’re the chief executive. (Never mind a personal life; that’s another story.) When the crisis passes, that’s a good time to join an outside board. (It took HP’s (HPQ) Mark Hurd three years before he joined the board of News Corp., for example.)

There’s no right answer to this question. It’s all opinion. And Pattie already is reporting that Bartz will exit the Intel and NetApp boards. Were she to drop Cisco too, I’d argue for boosting her odds of success at Yahoo exponentially.

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Wall Street watchers think of capital markets and financial players out west as being on the "other" coast. That's not how it's viewed in the Pacific time zone. From the venture capitalists of Sand Hill Road to the bond kingpins of Orange County to the corporate finance department at a certain software company in Redmond, Wash., there's plenty going on "out there." Adam Lashinsky should know. A native of Chicago, he has covered West Coast finance for a decade, with an emphasis on money matters in Silicon Valley. If it involves money and it's happening west of the Mississippi, look for it in Go West.

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