Here’s the image that Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer put up on the screen yesterday when she talked publicly for the first time about the HR policy that brought her worldwide controversy.
“I need to talk about the elephant in the room,” Mayer said at the Great Place to Work conference in Los Angeles. In case you don’t get her joke, the “WFH” on the pachyderm’s back is the CEO’s code for “Work From Home.” This is the work-style that Mayer believes must end if she’s going to turn Yahoo around.
“People are more productive when they’re alone,” Mayer explained. “But they’re more collaborative and innovative when they’re together.”
Here is my Fortune colleague Chris Tkaczyk’s account of Mayer’s talk about working at Yahoo. And my interview with Mayer last November — her first after taking the job as Yahoo CEO — is this week’s featured Fortune Brainstorm Podcast. You can find the conversation here.