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What Is The Cluetrain?
A "manifesto" written in 2000 by a bunch of forward-thinking folks tired of the same old thing.
A way of thinking about our place in the corporate culture.
A method for enacting big changes with few resources.
Markets Are Conversations
These conversations take place outside the company (Fort Business) among our customers.
They take place inside among ourselves.
They should take place between us and our customers.
Corporations Are Bad Conversationalists
Corporations (and organizations) are afraid to speak with a real voice.
It means losing control
They like speaking, but not listening
It's time to learn to listen...
Human Voices Resonate
We all know BS when we hear it.
Marketing is putting a bow on BS.
Marketing is a one-sided conversation.
The internet is changing all this - turning it into a two-way conversation.
These conversations take place in and outside of companies.
The 95 Theses - Conversations
Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.
The Internet is enabling conversations among human beings that were simply not possible in the era of mass media.
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.
Corporations do not speak in the same voice as these new networked conversations. To their intended online audiences, companies sound hollow, flat, literally inhuman.
The 95 Theses - Positions
Getting a sense of humor does not mean putting some jokes on the corporate web site. Rather, it requires big values, a little humility, straight talk, and a genuine point of view.
Companies attempting to "position" themselves need to take a position. Optimally, it should relate to something their market actually cares about.
Bombastic boasts—"We are positioned to become the preeminent provider of XYZ"—do not constitute a position.
The 95 Theses - Intranets
Companies typically install intranets top-down to distribute HR policies and other corporate information that workers are doing their best to ignore.
Intranets naturally tend to route around boredom. The best are built bottom-up by engaged individuals cooperating to construct something far more valuable: an intranetworked corporate conversation.
A healthy intranet organizes workers in many meanings of the word. Its effect is more radical than the agenda of any union.
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.
When corporate intranets are not constrained by fear and legalistic rules, the type of conversation they encourage sounds remarkably like the conversation of the networked marketplace.
The 95 Theses - Org Charts
Org charts worked in an older economy where plans could be fully understood from atop steep management pyramids and detailed work orders could be handed down from on high.
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.
As policy, these notions are poisonous. As tools, they are broken. Command and control are met with hostility by intranetworked knowledge workers and generate distrust in internetworked markets.
The 95 Theses - Markets
As markets, as workers, both of us are sick to death of getting our information by remote control. Why do we need faceless annual reports and third-hand market research studies to introduce us to each other?
As markets, as workers, we wonder why you're not listening. You seem to be speaking a different language.
The inflated self-important jargon you sling around—in the press, at your conferences—what's that got to do with us?
Your tired notions of "the market" make our eyes glaze over. We don't recognize ourselves in your projections—perhaps because we know we're already elsewhere.
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.
Networks Are Self-Forming
We subvert org structures and process to get our jobs done.
We know who knows what we need to know and we go right to them.
Not all process is bad, but meaningless process is... meaningless.
Tunneling Out Of Fort Business
Blogging turned Fort Business inside out.
It put a human voice to the marketing nonsense of the corporation.
Not enough of us do it.
Communicating With A Human Voice
No more PR sent internally
No more marketing nonsense
Tell me what you think, not what you want me to think.
Provide information, not marketing.
Customers are not adversaries.
It's All About Revolution
Just because you're not seeing a revolution -- or what Hollywood has told you a revolution ought to look like -- doesn't mean there isn't one going down.
Links Are Where It's At
The information is out there, and it wants to be free.
Hyperlinks subvert hierarchy, both in the real world and online.
We find the knowledge we need and go through our own path to get it, not some contrived process.
The org chart on paper looks nothing like the "real" balance of power.
The Best Change Comes From The Bottom
Don't be afraid to express your opinion.
Smart people will listen to it.
If you don't see the tool you need, create it, even if it sucks.
Actions speaks louder than a suggestion box.
How To Join
Start publishing, create links, start a conversation.