Thinking about Cluetrain and Education...
Cluetrain has 95 Theses. It's interesting what some creative find/replace can create
· Education is about conversations.
· Schools consist of human beings, not demographic sectors.
· Conversations among human beings sound human. They
are conducted in a human voice.
· Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives,
dissenting arguments or humorous asides, the human voice is typically open,
natural, uncontrived.
· People recognize each other as such from the sound of this
voice.
· 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 schools and among intranetworked
learners, 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, Education is about getting smarter, more
informed, more organized. Participation in a networked market changes people
fundamentally.
· People in networked schools 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
Schools do about their own products. And whether the news is good or bad, they
tell everyone.
· What's happening to schools is also happening among
learners. A metaphysical construct called "The School" is the only
thing standing between the two.
· Educational Institutions do not speak in the same voice as
these new networked conversations. To their intended online audiences, Schools
sound hollow, flat, literally inhuman.
· In just a few more years, the current homogenized
"voice" of learning —the sound of mission statements and brochures—will
seem as contrived and artificial as the language of the 18th century French
court.
· Already, Schools that speak in the language of the pitch,
the dog-and-pony show, are no longer speaking to anyone.
· Schools that assume online Education is about the same
schools that used to watch their ads on television are kidding themselves.
· Schools that don't realize their Education is about now
networked person-to-person, getting smarter as a result and deeply joined in
conversation are missing their best opportunity.
· Schools can now communicate with their students directly.
If they blow it, it could be their last chance.
· Schools need to realize their Education is about often
laughing. At them.
· Schools need to lighten up and take themselves less
seriously. They need to get a sense of humor.
· 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.
· Schools 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.
· Schools 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. Schools
are deeply afraid of their markets.
· By speaking in language that is distant, uninviting, arrogant,
they build walls to keep schools at bay.
· Most marketing programs are based on the fear that the
market might see what's really going on inside the company.
· Elvis said it best: "We can't go on together with
suspicious minds."
· Brand loyalty is the corporate version of going steady,
but the breakup is inevitable—and coming fast. Because they are networked,
smart Education is about able to renegotiate relationships with blinding speed.
· Networked schools 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?"
· Smart schools will find suppliers who speak their own
language.
· Learning to speak with a human voice is not a parlor
trick. It can't be "picked up" at some tony conference.
· To speak with a human voice, Schools must share the
concerns of their communities.
· But first, they must belong to a community.
· Schools must ask themselves where their corporate cultures
end.
· If their cultures end before the community begins, they
will have no market.
· Human communities are based on discourse—on human speech
about human concerns.
· The community of discourse is the market.
· Schools that do not belong to a community of discourse
will die.
· Schools 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 schools, 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.
· Schools 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 Schools 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.
· 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 Schools.
· 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.
· 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 schools.
· These two conversations want to talk to each other.
They are speaking the same language. They recognize each other's voices.
· Smart Schools 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 Schools have yet wised up.
· However subliminally at the moment, millions of people now
online perceive Schools as little more than quaint legal fictions that are
actively preventing these conversations from intersecting.
· This is suicidal. Schools want to talk to Schools.
· 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.
· Schools do not want to talk to flacks and hucksters. They
want to participate in the conversations going on behind the corporate
firewall.
· De-cloaking, getting personal: We are those
schools. 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.
· We're also the workers who make your Schools go. We want
to talk to customers directly in our own voices, not in platitudes written into
a script.
· As schools, 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 schools, 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?
· 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.
· 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.
· 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 learning " 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.
· We want you to drop your trip, come out of your neurotic
self-involvement, join the party.
· 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?
· 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.
· We know some people from your company. They're pretty cool
online. Do you have any more like that you're hiding? Can they come out and
play?
· 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'd like it if you got what's going on here. That'd be
real nice. But it would be a big mistake to think we're holding our breath.
· We have better things to do than worry about whether
you'll change in time to get our learning . Learning is only a part of our lives. It seems to be
all of yours. Think about it: who needs whom?
· 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.
· Even at its worst, our newfound conversation is more
interesting than most trade shows, more entertaining than any TV sitcom, and
certainly more true-to-life than the corporate web sites we've been seeing.
· Our allegiance is to ourselves—our friends, our new allies
and acquaintances, even our sparring partners. Schools that have no part in
this world, also have no future.
· Schools are spending billions of dollars on Y2K. Why can't
they hear this market timebomb ticking? The stakes are even higher.
· We're both inside Schools 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.
· We are waking up and linking to each other. We are watching.
But we are not waiting. · Education is about conversations.
· Schools consist of human beings, not demographic sectors.
· Conversations among human beings sound human. They
are conducted in a human voice.
· Whether delivering information, opinions, perspectives,
dissenting arguments or humorous asides, the human voice is typically open,
natural, uncontrived.
· People recognize each other as such from the sound of this
voice.
· 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 schools and among intranetworked
learners, 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, Education is about getting smarter, more
informed, more organized. Participation in a networked market changes people
fundamentally.
· People in networked schools 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
Schools do about their own products. And whether the news is good or bad, they
tell everyone.
· What's happening to schools is also happening among
learners. A metaphysical construct called "The Company" is the only
thing standing between the two.
· Corporations do not speak in the same voice as these new
networked conversations. To their intended online audiences, Schools sound
hollow, flat, literally inhuman.
· In just a few more years, the current homogenized
"voice" of learning —the sound of mission statements and
brochures—will seem as contrived and artificial as the language of the 18th
century French court.
· Already, Schools that speak in the language of the pitch,
the dog-and-pony show, are no longer speaking to anyone.
· Schools that assume online Education is about the same
schools that used to watch their ads on television are kidding themselves.
· Schools that don't realize their Education is about now
networked person-to-person, getting smarter as a result and deeply joined in
conversation are missing their best opportunity.
· Schools can now communicate with their schools directly.
If they blow it, it could be their last chance.
· Schools need to realize their Education is about often
laughing. At them.
· Schools need to lighten up and take themselves less
seriously. They need to get a sense of humor.
· 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.
· Schools 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.
· Schools 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. Schools
are deeply afraid of their schools.
· By speaking in language that is distant, uninviting,
arrogant, they build walls to keep schools at bay.
· Most marketing programs are based on the fear that the
market might see what's really going on inside the company.
· Elvis said it best: "We can't go on together with
suspicious minds."
· Brand loyalty is the corporate version of going steady,
but the breakup is inevitable—and coming fast. Because they are networked,
smart Education is about able to renegotiate relationships with blinding speed.
· Networked schools 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?"
· Smart schools will find suppliers who speak their own
language.
· Learning to speak with a human voice is not a parlor
trick. It can't be "picked up" at some tony conference.
· To speak with a human voice, Schools must share the
concerns of their communities.
· But first, they must belong to a community.
· Schools must ask themselves where their corporate cultures
end.
· If their cultures end before the community begins, they
will have no market.
· Human communities are based on discourse—on human speech
about human concerns.
· The community of discourse is the market.
· Schools that do not belong to a community of discourse
will die.
· Schools 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 schools, 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.
· Schools 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 Schools 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.
· 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 Schools.
· 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.
· 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 schools.
· These two conversations want to talk to each other.
They are speaking the same language. They recognize each other's voices.
· Smart Schools 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 Schools have yet wised up.
· However subliminally at the moment, millions of people now
online perceive Schools as little more than quaint legal fictions that are
actively preventing these conversations from intersecting.
· This is suicidal. Schools want to talk to Schools.
· 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.
· Schools do not want to talk to flacks and hucksters. They
want to participate in the conversations going on behind the corporate
firewall.
· De-cloaking, getting personal: We are those
schools. 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.
· We're also the workers who make your Schools go. We want
to talk to customers directly in our own voices, not in platitudes written into
a script.
· As schools, 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 schools, 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?
· 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.
· 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.
· 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 learning " 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.
· We want you to drop your trip, come out of your neurotic
self-involvement, join the party.
· 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?
· 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.
· We know some people from your company. They're pretty cool
online. Do you have any more like that you're hiding? Can they come out and
play?
· 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'd like it if you got what's going on here. That'd be
real nice. But it would be a big mistake to think we're holding our breath.
· We have better things to do than worry about whether
you'll change in time to get our learning . Learning is only a part of our lives. It seems to be
all of yours. Think about it: who needs whom?
· 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.
· Even at its worst, our newfound conversation is more
interesting than most trade shows, more entertaining than any TV sitcom, and
certainly more true-to-life than the corporate web sites we've been seeing.
· Our allegiance is to ourselves—our friends, our new allies
and acquaintances, even our sparring partners. Schools that have no part in
this world, also have no future.
· Schools are spending billions of dollars on Y2K. Why can't
they hear this market timebomb ticking? The stakes are even higher.
· We're both inside Schools 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 institutions, 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.
· We are waking up and linking to each other. We are
watching. But we are not waiting.
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