Driessen Samuel's Library tagged intranet → View Popular

Markets are conversations.
- The Internet is enabling conversations among human beings that
  were simply not possible in the era of mass media.
- Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy.
- In both internetworked markets and among
  intranetworked employees, people are speaking to each
  other in a powerful new way.
- These networked conversations are enabling powerful new forms of
  social organization and knowledge exchange to emerge.
- As a result, markets are getting smarter, more informed, more
  organized. Participation in a networked market changes people
  fundamentally.
- People in networked markets have figured out that they get far
  better information and support from one another than from
  vendors. So much for corporate rhetoric about adding value to
  commoditized products.
- There are no secrets. The networked market knows more than
  companies do about their own products. And whether the news is
  good or bad, they tell everyone.
- What's happening to markets is also happening among employees. A
  metaphysical construct called "The Company" is the only thing
  standing between the two.
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- Already, companies that speak in the language of the pitch, the
  dog-and-pony show, are no longer speaking to anyone.
- Companies that don't realize their markets are now networked
  person-to-person, getting smarter as a result and deeply joined
  in conversation are missing their best opportunity.
  
  Companies can now communicate with their markets directly. If
  they blow it, it could be their last chance.
  
  Companies need to realize their markets are often laughing. At
  them.
  
  Companies need to lighten up and take themselves less seriously.
  They need to get a sense of humor.
- humility
- Companies need to come down from their Ivory Towers and talk to
  the people with whom they hope to create relationships.
  
  Public Relations does not relate to the public. Companies are
  deeply afraid of their markets.
- Most marketing programs are based on the fear that the market
  might see what's really going on inside the company.
- Brand loyalty is the corporate version of going steady, but the
  breakup is inevitable—and coming fast. Because they are
  networked, smart markets are able to renegotiate relationships
  with blinding speed.
  
  Networked markets can change suppliers overnight. Networked
  knowledge workers can change employers over lunch. Your own
  "downsizing initiatives" taught us to ask the question: "Loyalty?
  What's that?"
- To speak with a human voice, companies must share the concerns of
  their communities.
  
  But first, they must belong to a community.
- The community of discourse is the market.
- Companies make a religion of security, but this is largely a red
  herring. Most are protecting less against competitors than
  against their own market and workforce.
  
  As with networked markets, people are also talking to each other
  directly inside the company—and not just about rules
  and regulations, boardroom directives, bottom lines.
- Such conversations are taking place today on corporate
  intranets. But only when the conditions are right.
  
  Companies typically install intranets top-down to distribute HR
  policies and other corporate information that workers are doing
  their best to ignore.
- While this scares companies witless, they also depend heavily on
  open intranets to generate and share critical knowledge. They
  need to resist the urge to "improve" or control these networked
  conversations.
- Today, the org chart is hyperlinked, not hierarchical. Respect
  for hands-on knowledge wins over respect for abstract authority.
  
  Command-and-control management styles both derive from and
  reinforce bureaucracy, power tripping and an overall culture of
  paranoia.
  
  Paranoia kills conversation. That's its point. But lack of open
  conversation kills companies.
  
  There are two conversations going on. One inside the company. One
  with the market.
- Smart companies will get out of the way and help the inevitable
  to happen sooner.
  
  If willingness to get out of the way is taken as a measure of IQ,
  then very few companies have yet wised up.
  
  However subliminally at the moment, millions of people now online
  perceive companies as little more than quaint legal fictions that
  are actively preventing these conversations from intersecting.
- This is suicidal. Markets want to talk to companies.
  
  Sadly, the part of the company a networked market wants to talk
  to is usually hidden behind a smokescreen of hucksterism, of
  language that rings false—and often is.
- De-cloaking, getting personal: We are those markets. We
  want to talk to you.
  
  We want access to your corporate information, to your plans and
  strategies, your best thinking, your genuine knowledge. We will
  not settle for the 4-color brochure, for web sites chock-a-block
  with eye candy but lacking any substance.
- As markets, as workers, we wonder why you're not listening. You
  seem to be speaking a different language.
- Maybe you're impressing your investors. Maybe you're impressing
  Wall Street. You're not impressing us.
  
  If you don't impress us, your investors are going to take a bath.
  Don't they understand this? If they did, they wouldn't let
  you talk that way.
- We like this new marketplace much better. In fact, we are
  creating it.
- We are immune to advertising. Just forget it.
  
  If you want us to talk to you, tell us something. Make it
  something interesting for a change.
  
  We've got some ideas for you too: some new tools we need, some
  better service. Stuff we'd be willing to pay for. Got a minute?
  
  You're too busy "doing business" to answer our email? Oh gosh,
  sorry, gee, we'll come back later. Maybe.
- You want us to pay? We want you to pay attention.
- Your product broke. Why? We'd like to ask the guy who made it.
  Your corporate strategy makes no sense. We'd like to have a chat
  with your CEO. What do you mean she's not in?
  
  We want you to take 50 million of us as seriously as you take one
  reporter from The Wall Street Journal.
- When we have questions we turn to each other for answers. If you
  didn't have such a tight rein on "your people" maybe they'd be
  among the people we'd turn to.
  
  When we're not busy being your "target market," many of us
  are your people. We'd rather be talking to friends online
  than watching the clock. That would get your name around better
  than your entire million dollar web site. But you tell us speaking
  to the market is Marketing's job.
- We have real power and we know it. If you don't quite see the
  light, some other outfit will come along that's more attentive,
  more interesting, more fun to play with.
- We're both inside companies and outside them. The boundaries that
  separate our conversations look like the Berlin Wall today, but
  they're really just an annoyance. We know they're coming down.
  We're going to work from both sides to take them down.
- To traditional corporations, networked conversations may appear
  confused, may sound confusing. But we are organizing faster than
  they are. We have better tools, more new ideas, no rules to slow
  us down.