I'm Unreasonable
yes I know
*As usual I am FOS*

I used to think we were all one, so to speak, because I believed the hype (I know, I know). Then it was like an adopted child finding out not only that he was adopted, but that, "Well, Johnny, you are ten and it's time you began paying your way." "But... Mary doesn't!" "She's one of us." Unfortunately, I loved SL but SL didn't love me back. After that I thought, "I suppose making a nice place to work for employees is a worthy thing," since I didn't want to see LL as just a company. I wanted SL to be the "place" that Philip said it aspired to be, if not for us then at least for someone, but it isn't that, either.

Placeness
There's a translation between LL and SL that isn't working at all, since the two identities are mixed up together. LL needs to be a company concerned with staying afloat in a harsh economy, but it would be more useful to customers if SL had some placeness to it, and wasn't just LL with a sheepskin tied on its back.

Disconnect
There should be great deliberation in altering the world's rules and laws since that's what people build their plans upon. There should also be care taken in the way LL interfaces with its customers, in particular that the messages should not conflict and forward-facing LL employees who, after all, are part of the placeness, part of SL to us, should not be part of cost-cutting layoffs. The good will and relationships they have built up are part of SL, not LL, and if LL doesn't value those - then it needs to make a buffer government or something, as it doesn't understand its customers needs. Right now everything is jumbled up and it's no wonder there is confusion.

Blood-Brain Barrier
I can see it work if there were a forward-facing cadre of people interacting between LL and SL's customers, but only if they have some degree of independence - a blood-brain barrier. Maybe they'd be paid according to Supply Linden's financial success, or something, like base pay but automatic bonuses when Supply made above X. I dunno, I'm tired and need to phlop.

Another thing: that entire agility concept as applied to business is the opposite of what is needed to foster placeness - it's the opposite of what SL requires. Placeness is fostered by ritual, deliberation, repetition, value built over time, growth over time. Agility says you can lay off one-third of your employees, that it's us versus them, instantaneous change, I'm-all-right-Jack. Agility is fine for LL if it can keep its identity separate from that of SL, but it has never done that.