The Cluetrain Manifesto is available from Amazon.com
Three of the four co-authors joined us for my chat session Feb. 3, 2000, and will be coming back next Thursday, Feb. 10, for a sequel. That's Christopher Locke, Rick Levine, and David Weinberger. You can see the edited transcript of the Feb. 3 chat at www.samizdat.com/chat124.html
This article was heard on the radio program "The Computer Report," which is broadcast live on WCAP in Lowell, Mass., and is syndicated on WBNW in Boston and WPLM in Plymouth, Mass.
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In the beginning was the voice.
The authors don't use that phrase, but that's the sense of what they have to say.
By voice, they don't mean sound, rather they mean personal expression, the kind of self-revelation that comes when you speak candidly or type rapidly and the words just flow, without the typical self-censoring of corporate-speak.
For them, everything that matters about the Internet seems to be related to voice.
Markets are "conversations." And companies that don't realize that and don't participate fully and honestly and openly are locking themselves out of the online marketplace -- and hence out of any marketplace at all.
The efficient internal operation of companies, as well, depends on open dialogue, which is made possible by Internet technology, but which runs counter to the corporate culture of many large companies.
This is a favorite theme of mine, as well -- that knowledge management means nothing if people don't share information, if the corporate culture, instead, favors information hoarding as a mark of status and a means of personal advancement. They make the point that the current opportunity evolved from earlier advances, including the total quality effort associated with Deming. They quote Deming as saying "drive out fear." If employees are afraid of speaking up, quality efforts are basically doomed. And the same applies now over corporate intranets. The real value to be gained comes with employees feel free to candidly share their insights, inspirations, and criticism.
And customers and partners, also want to be dealt with candidly, without the hyperbole and the fuzzy jargon of press releases and brochureware. They want to be able to talk with real people who understand their concerns and will try to give them real answers.
Many companies have been reluctant to head in that direction, for fear of legal liability if "unauthorized" employees make unedited statements to the outside world. The authors make the point that the loss of business from not speaking with a clear voice, from not letting responsible and caring employees help customers, is probably far greater than any liability. If you don't take part in the conversation that is the marketplace -- through email, forums, newsgroups, etc. -- you simply won't stay in business for very long. And if your employees don't have the confidence and experience of speaking out clearly in their own voices over your corporate intranet, chances are good that they won't be able to effectively help customers over the Internet.
The authors convincingly, eloquently, irreverently, and humorously point out the typical mistakes and the right direction. But they refuse to provide a formula for success -- a neat list of things you need to do to put your company on track. While the problems seem obvious -- once they have been pointed out -- there's no cookie-cutter solution.
They provide a mock 12-step program for Internet business success:
"... The lesson is: don't wait for someone to show you how. Learn from your spontaneous mistakes, not from safe prescriptions and cautiously analyzed procedures. Don't try to keep people from going wrong by repeating the mantra of how to get it right. Getting it right isn't enough any more. There's no invention in it. There's no voice...
"Scary isn't it? Good. You ought to be scared. That's a realistic reaction. You want comfort? Invent your own. Exhilaration and joy are also in order. But face the facts: the tracks end at the edge of the jungle."
Response from Sudha Jamthe <sujamthe@yahoo.com>, Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2000 1
Very well written. You bring your own experience in this timeline and raise an important point about "shrinking timlines and internet time" by talking about our own recent past as history.
This makes me look at my personal experience as I think thru this phase. I am amazed at how we all have tried to cope with the speed of change by compartmentalizing the change into multiple phases - the early browser days, new tool days, push technology, communities, portals ... Its just our way of handling the speed by saying that phase imparted upon us, its over, now we build upon that into the next phase and in some way prep ourself that we understood the previous phase.
Thanks for sending me the review. I saw a related book -"New Rules of the new economy" by Kevin Kelly when I was travelling. This focuses on building an economy by decentralization but not total grassroots, but why some degree of order is useful.
Rgds,
Su
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