Organizational Theory question: How do you avoid, once becoming a larger enterprise, this kind of "mission creep" where too many groups hold sway over the public face and mission of a company?

The most common model I've seen thus far is the "single-minded-guy-at-the-top" model: Apple, Zappos (any other good examples come to mind?). A relentless voice to keep reminding people "what is our core business?" and ruthlessly cull everything that isn't core, even if it contributes revenue.

I don't usually hear about JetBlue's CEO holding that kind of sway-- they seem to have that culture organically. If I recall, Southwest used to have that kind of CEO, but he's retired, so the question remains of how to maintain that kind of focus.

The problem with managing any large organisation is achieving some degree of harmony between what the people with the vision and overall responsibility want and what the people working five levels below them are actually doing. Once you reach the point where no-one has non-trivial insight into everything that is going on, this becomes very difficult, no matter how carefully you plan your corporate communications and how sincere the management structure.

A common, and reasonable-sounding, approach to fixing problem areas is to create some sort of "focus group" or "core team" (or bring in an external consultancy) who can take the time to do what the rest of the staff can't do without disrupting their regular jobs: go talk to people at all levels through the organisation, gather the key points about what is happening and what the staff feel about it, summarise what is actually happening for management, and possibly advise on how to improve the situation based on what has worked elsewhere.

The difficulty with this approach is that in most organisations, there will be a grass-roots resistance/resentment of any changes that such a working group proposes, because people don't like to be told how to do their jobs, even if they are doing them badly and don't necessarily realise it. You have to have honest, full-on backing right down the management structure to pull this off, and you need to get the "good" people on your side first so that when others challenge the changes the people they know personally and respect will shape their views. This is possible, but IME only if senior management are willing to deal brutally with any middle management interference runners, which they seldom are. (Edit: Also, anyone seconded to the working group needs to have both an open mind themselves and the respect of the management team in whatever part of the organisation they represent. Otherwise, they will just disrupt the group, or they'll talk a lot and come up with good ideas to which no-one will then listen.)

Those who get to run big businesses and have snazzy MBAs and such are supposed to understand these issues and get them right, but it's sad how often they don't.