Cluetrain Manifesto

The cluetrain manifesto is perhaps one of the most stimulating books on organizational behavior and psychology that I have encountered. The concept that identifies markets as being essentially dialogue between people is rereshing. I'm personally in my second career having ridden the great yellow box film company to the summit and back down to the valley from wince it came. We used to refer to marketing the company's product to consumers as somehow a right associated with some supernatural force. But, that was yesterday, and yesterday is gone.

I do recall spending countless hours pouring over statistical data of how vairous group so people behave. The part that I found most fascinating was that there was seldom any corporate learning associated with the exercise, i.e., we paid our statisticians big bucks for their work, and we went back to our cubicles and pursued our daily grind as if no revelation had occurred. Indeed, it had not. Everthing we saw and heard from our consultants was instinctive information that was well known within the corporate bureaucracy. But, after each exercise, we could point to a book on the shelf that at least quantified for posterity what we already knew.

The process of pursuing one's carrer was the part that was most fascinating. Career advancement and performance were seldome related. Rather, advancement was more closely related to being liked by senior executives. First person dialogue was almost never misunderstood or poorly communicated. Body language, past history, personal agendas, etc. were not checked at the door. However, they were well understood. But, once a face to face contact ended, spin took over and just about anything was fair game because the game was not progress towards some agreed upon goal but the justaposition of personal agendas against an advancement goal.

I'll continue my thoughts on this at a later time. Let me know if you have any response for me on this subject.