WHITESPACE’S PEANUT BUTTER MANIFESTOWhiteSpace! which was once the web’s advertising giant and the most visited sites on the internet, has in recenttimes seen significant market value decline. The once revered market leader has been loosing market share torivals Google and Facebook in the digital advertising space which is getting more competitive with the entry ofTwitter, Amazon and the Linkdin. Growth had slowed, Google had overtaken WhiteSpace! in termsof online advertising revenues, and the share price had fallen by nearly a third since the startof the year, with an imminent problem of Microsoft takeover which could spell danger for WhiteSpace! Overall, employees, shareholders and internet users have been at the receiving end of this exploitative management.Leadership was sharply ciritcised for lacking ownership and strategic direction. It would soonbe realized that Senior Executives had personally benefited from the problem faced by WhiteSpace! Thesituation has been perceived as synonumous to the tragedy of the commons, a problem in economics that occurswhen individuals neglect the well-being of society, the common good, in pursuit of personal gain; and this isrelated with two currents that have developed in Economies. It was “Greed”! Greed prevented application ofcommon resource/common endowment from fulfilling its purpose, that is, from serving the common needs ofall stakeholders.In November 2006, Brad Garlinghouse, MBA graduate and a WhiteSpace! Senior Vice President, wrote a memoto his top managers arguing that WhiteSpace!, the diversified Internet Company, was spreading resources toothinly, like peanut butter on a slice of bread. Edited extracts from the memo follow:Three and half years ago, I enthusiastically joined WhiteSpace! The magnitude of the opportunity was onlymatched by the magnitude of the assets. And an amazing team has been responsible for rebuilding WhiteSpace!But all is not well. I imagine there’s much discussion amongst the Company’s senior most leadership aroundthe challenges we face. At the risk of being redundant, I wanted to share my take on our current situation andoffer a recommended path forward, an attempt to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem.Recognizing Our ProblemsWe lack a focused, cohesive vision for our company. We want to do everything and be everything — toeveryone. We’ve known this for years, talk about it incessantly, but do nothing to fundamentally address it. Weare scared to be left out. We are reactive instead of charting an unwavering course. We are separated into silosthat far too frequently don’t talk to each other. And when we do talk, it isn’t to collaborate on a clearly focused strategy, but rather to argue and fight about ownership, strategies and tactics. I’ve heard our strategy describedas spreading peanut butter across the myriad opportunities that continue to evolve in the online world. Theresult: a thin layer of investment spread across everything we do and thus we focus on nothing in particular.We lack clarity of ownership and accountability. The most painful manifestation of this is the massiveredundancy that exists throughout the organization. We now operate in an organizational structure — admittedlycreated with the best of intentions — that has become overly bureaucratic. For far too many employees, thereis another person with dramatically similar and overlapping responsibilities. This slows us down and burdensthe company with unnecessary costs. Equally problematic, at what point in the organization does someone reallyOWN the success of their product or service or feature? Product, marketing, engineering, corporate strategy,financial operations… there are so many people in charge (or believe that they are in charge) that it’s not clearif anyone is in charge. This forces decisions to be pushed up – rather than down. It forces decisions by committeeor consensus and discourages the innovators from breaking the mold… thinking outside the box. There’s areason why a centerfielder and a left fielder have clear areas of ownership. Pursuing the same ball repeatedlyresults in either collisions or dropped balls. Knowing that someone else is pursuing the ball and hoping to avoidthat collision – we have become timid in our pursuit. Again, the ball drops.We lack decisiveness. Combine a lack of focus with unclear ownership, and the result is that decisions areeither not made or are made when it is already too late. Without a clear and focused vision, and without completeclarity of ownership, we lack a macro perspective to guide our decisions and visibility into who should makethose decisions. We are repeatedly stymied by challenging and hairy decisions. We are held hostage by ouranalysis paralysis.We end up with competing (or redundant) initiatives and synergistic opportunities living in the different silosof our company.REQUIRED:i. Explain five (5) reasons why the issues facing WhiteSpace were strategic. Find examples of all the itemsdiscussed in characteristics of strategic decisions.ii. Explain in two (2) ways how the problems facing WhiteSpace would have impeded their strategysuccess?iii. As a Strategist for WhiteSpace, based on your understanding of the “tragedy of the commons”,recommend five (5) policies/strategies you believe could be introduced by the Board of WhiteSpace inorder to address their problems and restore WhiteSpace to its position as industry leader, while fulfillingtheir commitment to stakeholders.

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INTRODUCTION - 
In the manifesto, now popularly known as the "Peanut Butter Manifesto," Yahoo's lack…