Online Markets...

Networked markets are beginning to
self-organize faster than the companies that have traditionally
served them. Thanks to the web, markets are becoming better
informed, smarter, and more demanding of qualities missing from
most business organizations.

...People of
Earth

The sky is open to the stars. Clouds roll over us night and day.
Oceans rise and fall. Whatever you may have heard, this is our
world, our place to be. Whatever you've been told, our flags fly
free. Our heart goes on forever. People of Earth,
remember.

• 
  
  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.

• 
  
  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.

• 
  
  Human communities are based on discourse—on human speech about
  human concerns.
  
  

  
  
  

• 
  
  The community of discourse is the market.
  
  

  
  
  

• 
  
  Companies that do not belong to a community of discourse will
  die.

• 
  
  Today, the org chart is hyperlinked, not hierarchical. Respect
  for hands-on knowledge wins over respect for abstract authority.

• 
  
  There are two conversations going on. One inside the company. One
  with the market.
  
  

  
  
  

• 
  
  In most cases, neither conversation is going very well. Almost
  invariably, the cause of failure can be traced to obsolete
  notions of command and control.

• 
  
  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.

• 
  
  We like this new marketplace much better. In fact, we are
  creating it.
  
  

  
  
  

• 
  
  You're invited, but it's our world. Take your shoes off at the
  door. If you want to barter with us, get down off that camel!

• 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.

• 
  
  Don't worry, you can still make money. That is, as long as it's
  not the only thing on your mind.
  
  

  
  
  

• 
  
  Have you noticed that, in itself, money is kind of
  one-dimensional and boring? What else can we talk about?

• 
  There are two conversations going on. One inside the company. One
  >
  
  with the market.
  >
  
  

  
  
  

• 
  
  
  In most cases, neither conversation is going very well. Almost
  >
  
  invariably, the cause of failure can be traced to obsolete
  >
  
  notions of command and control.
  >

Imagine a world where everyone was constantly learning, a world where what you wondered was more interesting than what you knew, and curiosity counted for more than certain knowledge. Imagine a world where what you gave away was more valuable than what you held back, where joy was not a dirty word, where play was not forbidden after your eleventh birthday. Imagine a world in which the business of business was to imagine worlds people might actually want to live in someday. Imagine a world created by the people, for the people not perishing from the earth forever.

Yeah. Imagine that.

The Demonic Paradox

chapter seven

We will strive to listen in new ways -- to the voices of

quiet anguish, to voices that speak without words, the voices

of the heart, to the injured voices, and the anxious voices,

and the voices that have despaired of being heard.

Richard M. Nixon, first inaugural address, 1969

chapter six

And increasingly, we value only two qualities:

1. The engagement and passion-for-quality of genuine craft.
   
2. Conversations among recognizably human voices.

The Cluetrain Hit-One-Outta-the-Park Twelve-Step

Program for Internet Business Success

1. Relax
   
2. Have a sense of humor
   
3. Find your voice and use it
   
4. Tell the truth
   
5. Don’t panic
   
6. Enjoy yourself
   
7. Be brave
   
8. Be curious
   
9. Play more
   
10. Dream always
    
11. Listen up
    
12. Rap on

elevator rap

the following is the complete second chapter of



The Cluetrain Manifesto:

The End of Business as Usual

Copyright © 1999, 2001

chapter two

This fervid desire for the Web bespeaks a longing so intense that it can only be understood as spiritual. A longing indicates that something is missing in our lives. What is missing is the sound of the human voice.
>

The spiritual lure of the Web is the promise of the return of voice.

How to Hate Your Job

A managed environment requires behavior from us that we accept as inevitable although, of course, it is really mandatory only because it is mandated. We call it "professionalism."

And yet... we feel resentment. Find someone who likes being managed, who feels fully at home in his or her professional self. Our longing for the Web is rooted in the deep resentment we feel towards being managed.
>

However much we long for the Web is how much we hate our job.

We are all victims of this assault on voice, the attempt to get us to shut up and listen to the narrowest range of ideas imaginable.

It is only the force of our regret at having lived in this bargain that explains the power of our longing for the Web.

The Longing

We don’t know what the Web is for but we’ve adopted it faster than any technology since fire.

And when the thrill of hearing ourselves speak again wears off, we will begin to build a new world.

That is what the Web is for.

chapter five

Hyperlinks Subvert Hierarchy

Fort Business’s assumptions are being challenged by a meek little thing: a hyperlink.

To be human is to be imperfect. We die. We make mistakes.

Sometimes we run from our fallibility by being decisive. But doubt is the natural human state, and decisiveness -- more addictive than anything you might shoot into your veins -- is often based on a superstitious belief in the magic of action.

To have a conversation, you have to be comfortable being human -- acknowledging you don’t have all the answers, being eager to learn from someone else and to build new ideas together.

You can only have a conversation if you’re not afraid to be wrong.

How could you hope to capture this on an org chart? And how do you compensate people fairly if their value depends upon their participation in a shifting set of hyperlinked associations? How do you hire great hyperlinked people? How could this ever be expressed on a résumé?

Great questions... because there aren’t clear answers yet.

Information wants to be free, sure. But it wants to be free because it wants to find other ideas, copulate, and spawn whole broods of new ideas.

Controlling information is like trying to control a conversation: it can’t be done and still be genuine.

This may not sound revolutionary, but consider:

• People used to keep their drafts secret for fear of looking like idiots, but now they post them and acknowledge they may be completely wrong.
  
• Work has gone from an individual task to a group task.
  
• The old model of keeping drafts secret until the moment of publication has been broken; ideas are now public from their inception.
  
• Ideas are assumed to be given out freely rather than hoarded.
  
• People are brought in not because they are in a chain of command but because they have necessary skills, share interests, and are fun to work with.
  
• Sober-sided reports that were the mark of professionalism are often replaced by humor-filled interchanges.

• Unlike information, they have a start and a finish. The order counts a lot.
  
• They talk about events, not conditions.
  
• They imply a deep relationship among the events, a relationship characterized overall as "unfolding" as if the end were present in the beginning

But it’s not just systems that are imperfect. More important, so are we humans. Say it with me: humans are imperfect. I am imperfect.

Feels good, doesn’t it?

But wrongness has a lot going for it beyond the fact that some things can only be learned through trial and error. For example:

• Some people are great at generating ideas but terrible at thinking through their impact. You want them to have as many bad ideas as possible because they will thereby randomly generate more good ideas. (I tell my clients that I try to maintain a 9:1 ratio of bad ideas to good. And, no, I can’t tell which are which. If only.)

• Errors are how assumptions become visible. And there is nothing more valuable than a newly discovered assumption, because only then can you see what’s holding you back and what could propel you forward.
  
• There’s too much to know, so all important decisions are, to some extent, random. By being free to make errors, you can try more paths until you stumble on one that takes you somewhere interesting (albeit probably not where you at first thought -- mistakenly -- you should be heading).

• Mistakes give us something to talk about.
  
• Being wrong is a lot funnier than being right. The right type of laughter -- laughter at what the mistake reveals about our situation rather than laughter aimed at a person who dares to be human -- is enormously liberating. In fact, laughter is the sound that knowledge makes when it’s born.

Go out and commit a whopper. Then embrace it publicly.

It’s a good feeling. It’s liberating. It’s how you find your voice.