Nutella Man – How organizations opt for “smooth sameness” when it comes to employee communication

by Dr. Leandro Herrero:

Companies spend millions on finely segmented marketing. They define customer personas, profile audiences, tailor content for Gen Z or Gen X. Yet, when it comes to internal communications, the same companies spread their messages like Nutella: evenly, indiscriminately, and with little regard for who’s receiving what. Employees are treated not as nuanced individuals, but as a smooth, spreadable mass. It’s the age of Nutella Man.

Some metaphors land so unexpectedly, they take hold instantly. “Nutella Man” is one of them. The phrase doesn’t come from an ad campaign or pop culture fad, but from a striking essay by the writer N.S. Lyons, who borrowed from Albert Camus to describe a creeping feature of modern humanity: the erasure of identity through smooth sameness. Lyons writes of the ideal citizen in today’s technocratic world as “a paste without lumps or clots,” homogenised and frictionless — the perfect substrate for managerial systems that value predictability over personality.

You can see it everywhere. In global organisations where values are rolled out like software updates. In HR policies that assume universal human preferences. In internal campaigns that talk about authenticity while prescribing identical behaviours. What’s prized is adaptability, alignment, and a pleasant flatness. What’s discouraged — usually without saying so — is depth, difference, and tension.

Nutella Man is polite. He nods in meetings. He adjusts quickly. He is proud to be part of the team, just not quite sure which one. He doesn’t object. He updates his profile, completes the training, and embraces the brand. His uniqueness has been emulsified. He spreads well.

The metaphor has legs beyond the poetic. At its root, this reflects an old philosophical impulse: the desire to escape the messy complexity of real people and replace it with tidy, manageable categories. Today, the same instinct appears in more secular, managerial forms. Lyons, Camus, and even writers like Herbert Marcuse saw the risk of this impulse long before it reached our Teams channels. It is the dream of a frictionless world, made operational.

Nutella Man is not incompetent. In fact, he’s often highly productive. But he is also existentially adrift. He adapts endlessly, until he no longer knows what he’s adapting to. He conforms so well, he forgets the shape of his original form. In the language of business, he’s agile, scalable, and ready for redeployment. In the language of philosophy, he’s lost.

In organisational life, the consequences are subtle but corrosive. When everyone is spreadable, nothing sticks. Strategy becomes saturated with sameness. Values become wallpaper. Storytelling becomes a blur. Diversity becomes decorative.

And nowhere is this more evident than in the work of communications.

The Homogenised Voice

In the world of marketing, segmentation is everything. Messaging is crafted to resonate with precise audiences. Life insurance isn’t sold to the very young. Mortgage deals aren’t offered to the unemployed. Sales scripts are written with contingencies: “Check for understanding,” “Handle objections,” “Know when to close.”

Yet these same companies, so refined in their external messaging, treat internal audiences as one undifferentiated blob. The same message cascades from the top in bulletproof optimism. The same video, the same intranet post, the same cascade deck. There is little thought for reception, tone, timing. Internal selling becomes indistinct and flat. Communications become Nutella.

This isn’t a failure of professionalism. It’s the consequence of a deeper mentality: one that sees people not as human receivers, but as units in a system. Smooth communication, like smooth people, is easier to manage.

But communication without friction rarely provokes thought. A message that glides off the surface leaves no mark. In the pursuit of efficiency, we lose the very thing that internal communication is meant to cultivate: engagement, resonance, meaning.

Texture

Organisations need to revalue what we might call “constructive lumpiness.” Messages should meet people where they are, not where the template assumes they are. Voices should vary. Stories should surprise. Leaders should sound like themselves. Friction, respectfully applied, should be welcome.

We cannot stir complexity out of culture and expect strength to remain. People are not spreads. And communication is not a topping.

If Nutella Man is the future of internal life, then no wonder so many people feel undernourished at work. The flattening of voice, character, and message may soothe systems, but it starves the soul.

Nutella, Identity, and the Human Condition

And here we arrive at what is for me the mother of all paradoxes in corporate life. We are fragmenting identity in an obsessive way. We are praising diversity and stressing our belonging to multiple identities; gender, race, minority or majority status, or the increasingly misused term “neurodiversity,” (which, speaking as a psychiatrist creates more problems than it tries to solve), among others. These categories have emerged for historical and often vital reasons. This is not the place to debate their merits.

But here is the tension: the colossal effort of differentiation that percolates through corporate rhetoric is not matched by the day-to-day treatment of people in the workplace. The theory is one of careful distinction. The practice is Nutella.

It is a fascinating contradiction. Diversity is celebrated rhetorically, while uniformity dominates practically.

For me, the celebration of diversity without a celebration of what we have in common is a half-baked celebration of the human condition. We are not the broken mirror recomposed by gluing the diverse shards. We are each our own version of its reflection.

It sometimes feels as though we are stuck between two extremes: twenty diverse identities, or just one — Nutella. In this absurd polarization, the real loss is for the human condition as human: the universal, non-negotiable ground of respect, dignity, and meaningful work. This is for me the real fundamental conversation.

It’s incredible what Nutella can open up as a conversation starter.

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Dr Leandro Herrero is Chief Organizational Architect at The Chalfont Project, Author, International Speaker and Psychiatrist. For the past 25 years, Dr Herrero and his team have been transforming culture in organizations via his pioneering Viral Change™ methodology. He is a Strategic Columnist.

Written by: Editor