by Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls, and David Weinberger
Published 2000; ISBN: 0 273 65023 8
"What if the real power of the Web lay not in the technology behind it, but in the profound changes it brings to the way people interact with business?"
I read this book for the first time in 2005, five years after it was published. What's fascinating reading it today is how prophetic so much of the content has turned out to be. The Web is becoming interactive --> exactly what this book said would happen. How many books about the Internet become more relevant with age, instead of being obsolete within 6 months of publishing? Truly impressive!
This book is available on line at http://www.cluetrain.org. Here is a brief overview, but do go and read the book if you want to better understand what the Internet is beginning to really mean for business and organisations (especially the employee contract).
Your tired notions of the 'market' make our eyes glaze over... We like this new market much better. In fact, we are creating it. You are invited, but its our world.
"However much we long for the web is how much we hate our job."
We don't know what the web is for but we've adopted it faster than any technology since fire. Increasingly, the real work of the company is getting done by quirky individuals - who move ahead faster than the speed of management.
Commerce is a natural part of human life, but it has become increasingly unnatural. First, markets were places for exchange - buy, sell, talk. Then, 'market' became a verb - something you do to customers. Now, marketing broadcasts messages to people who don't want to listen. Conversations are about value, and the Internet means 'word of mouth' has gone global. Stories will define organisations. Silence is fatal.
"Listen to what your market says you are. If it's not to your liking, think long and hard before assuming the market is wrong."
Company communications = happy talk lies; organisation chart = red tape; data ≠ understanding; goals ≠ play; deadlines ≠ trust. Something's gone wrong... or maybe it's starting to go right?
"The Web isn't primarily a medium for information, marketing or sales. It's a world in which people meet, talk, build, fight, love, play. Hyperlinks have no symmetry, no plan, They are messy. Conversations are where ideas happen and partnerships are formed."
Open access to information changes the traditional decision-making process.
The 'job' was created 200 years ago and killed human spirit. The Internet is bringing it back. "'Command and control' is widely perceived as dysfunctional, but it's a hard habit to break:
"We don't believe what we're saying at work. We know no-one else believes it either, but we keep saying it because because because... The needle's stuck, the record's broken, ... but we're scared to stop."
There was never any grand plan for the Internet, and there isn't one today. The web is characterised by uncertainty. Don't wait. Learn from mistakes.
"The questions we ask won't predict the future. They will create it."