Peanut butter

As a kind of follow-up to the last post, it is interesting to read the so-called peanutbutter manifesto by Brad Garlinghouse, a Yahoo! senior vice president, where he says that the problem is to

want to do everything and be everything -- to everyone (..., being) separated into silos that far too frequently don't talk to each other, (... lacking) a leadership team rallying around a single cohesive strategy. (...) Our strategy (is being) described as spreading peanut butter across the myriad opportunities that continue to evolve in the online world. The result: a thin layer of investment spread across everything we do and thus we focus on nothing in particular.

The problem, as it seems, is not only the lack of a shared vision, but also of an organizational nature. Sound familiar? I guess many (large) companies have this problem. And any reorganization is a hard task. Sometimes I get the impression that if reorganizations take place at a yearly pace (or even faster) this is done without a clear vision of what the focus really is - and without considering the employees doing the real work. We need more managers that know what they're doing - in terms of business, organization, service and technology.

By the way, I love peanut butter. Especially the crunchy kind.