Peanut Butter Manifesto

I will begin by simply reporting what my recent New Yorker recorded. The topic was whether Google was becoming too diffuse, spreading itself too thin. Ken Auletta drew on an apparently well-discussed 2006 memo from a Yahoo senior vice-president, which has become known as the Peanut Butter Manifesto. It reads:

We lack a focused, cohesive vision for our company. We want to do everything and be everything--to everyone.... I've heard our strategy described as spreading peanut butter across 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.

Now you know I'm going to ring some changes on saying yes and no here. If Yahoo specifically, and Silicon Valley generally, have found that saying too many yeses is a bad practice that leads to nothing and nowhere in particular, we might also have something to learn. Although I love peanut butter, it seems to me that the reason this memo became famous (or infamous) is that it resonates. In organizations trying to compete in a wildly diversified market, it's become increasingly clear that we have to do a few things well rather than a number of things badly.

I'm working on my class tonight, "Getting Closer to God through Simplicity," and this Peanut Butter Manifesto probably needs to be applied to our spiritual lives as well. We spread ourselves too thin, running around from one task to the next, and find little room for our spiritual Center. Or at least I too often do.... My task tonight is to remind us that, in order to renovate our lives--and now to change the metaphor--we have to "edit what we have," as the famous designer John Wheatman wrote. (That brown vinyl lamp may need to find its way to the Salvation Army before the living room remolded can start.) Once we make some room in our lives, we find that God has been there all along.

It's a good topic. Maybe I'll bring peanut butter and invite some Yahoo executives....