In this solo YouTube monologue, management consultant Tom Guarriello, Ph.D., responds to a comment by Joseph from Tel Aviv about the acrimony surrounding YouTube’s comment system. Guarriello reflects on his own earlier video that questioned what kind of company YouTube wants to be, and uses the occasion to explore how expectations of corporate‑customer relationships have shifted in the era of connectivity. He shares a personal anecdote about the discomfort consultants feel when marketing services to friends, emphasizing the tension between money and relationship. He argues that modern companies succeed when they foster mutual, engaged relationships with users—an involvement that generates emotion and expectations of reciprocity. Guarriello contrasts this with the older, distant company model, and points to Google’s acquisition of YouTube as raising the bar for reliability, performance, and innovation. He concludes that the perceived bitterness in the community stems not from a lack of appreciation but from elevated expectations, especially as younger leaders drive new ways of operating.
Chapters
Good morning, it's Tom. I wanted to talk briefly this morning to a point that Joseph from Tel Aviv made in one of his videos over the last couple of days. And that had to do with Joseph's comment that he was a little distressed to see the level of acrimony in the comments and some videos that people had made regarding YouTube's difficulties with comments and this kind of thing. Now, excuse me, I was certainly one of the people who made a video about, about that, and I made a video in which I sort of addressed the leadership of YouTube and asked the question, what kind of company do you want to be? And, um, I asked the question intentionally because I think that, as I mentioned in that video, um, the expectation that is developing for companies is different today than it was in the past. And the expectation is one that is different in terms of the kind of relationship that we want to have with companies. As many of you know, I'm a management consultant, and one of the viewers of that video took me to task for, I think in his or her words, groveling for work with YouTube. So let me get something out of the way right off the bat. I'm a management consultant. Management consultants consult. We advise for money, and that's what we do. So I advise client companies for money, and that's— when I was starting off as a— just starting off as a management consultant, one of the people who really was a mentor to me, had an interesting point that he made in regard to what at that time was a reticence bordering on embarrassment that I had at marketing the services that we provided as a firm and that I provided personally. And the question that this guy asked me was one of those questions that kind of stops you in your tracks. And the question that he asked me was, well, 'When you're marketing your services to your friends, people in positions to make decisions about the kind of consulting that we do, do you believe that what you're saying will be helpful to these friends? Or do you not believe that what you would be saying in a consulting role would be helpful to them?' And I said, 'Well, I think it would be helpful to them.' So he said, 'Well, why wouldn't you then want to help your friends?' And it was one of those moments where you kind of go, go, oh yeah, why wouldn't I want to? Well, the reason is, of course, that we get a little squeamish about money entering into relationships with people that we know. And I think, again, here we have another instance of, you know, um, uh, anytime you market your services, people become very uncomfortable. I'm not— am I marketing our services? I'm always marketing our service. Every conversation that I have with people about business is in some, from some point of view, marketing our services. But here's the point that I was trying to make and the point that Joseph's video brought up. And that was that the kinds of companies that I think are going to be most successful in this current era of connectivity are the kinds of companies that, number one, YouTube is, and that is companies that engage people. Can you get more engaged than the core of the YouTube community is with a company than we are? I don't think you can. I think the kind of involvement that we have with YouTube, where we personally get on this site, create content which then becomes the, the key to the company's success, um, I don't think you can get more involved with a company than that. Now, involvement Brings along with it the kinds of expectations that any involvement has. Remember, involvement is a relationship. So when you're in a relationship, what are the characteristics of that relationship that you aim for? Well, one of the characteristics that you aim for is mutuality of involvement, right? I mean, when, when you're passionate about something in a relationship and the person that you're in the relationship with doesn't either share that passion or tell you what they think of that passion, but is— but remains essentially silent, blank, uninvolved. That's one of the things that undermines a relationship. It's that kind of detachment that we were used to having with companies in the past. Companies were distant entities who produced things based on their own decisions about what was marketable and what was going to be valuable, and your involvement was buying the thing or not buying the thing, or maybe filling out a little comment card or some such thing, and that was that. That was the nature of your involvement. But today, when we're— when we have this kind of connectivity which enables back and forth communication between ourselves and companies, um, we, we're able to say more, we're able to do more, we're able to write comments, we're able to make rants about comment monsters and, you know, things. Why? Because we're involved. Involvement yields emotion. When the emotion and when the involvement is not reciprocated then we question the nature of the relationship. And that's why I asked the question, what kind of company do you want to be? Do you want to be a company that enters into a relationship with your customers, us, excuse me, or do you want to be a company that remains, you know, behind a wall? Now, people have said, well, you know, it's really not YouTube anymore, it's Google. Well, Google's involvement with their customers is pretty well documented. Google gets very involved in customers' experience of their site. They do all kinds of very interesting research about customers' experience of searching with them and what it's like. And, you know, they do a tremendous amount of research of all kinds, not just ethnographic qualitative research. They do tons and tons of quantitative research. If you've ever seen I was lucky enough to see Larry and Sergey do a presentation at the TED conference a couple of years ago in which they demonstrated the way they do quantitative analyses of search, and it's impressive because Google's an impressive company. Why has it grown to be such an impressive company? Because people are engaged with it in a way where it's become an extension of our lives, and so it's important to us, and if Google doesn't work right We get upset and Google always works right. I mean, we've come to expect that reliability. So one of the things that the Google acquisition of YouTube has done, I think, is to raise the bar for performance on the part of YouTube. We expect that what we're going to get here is Google-level performance. We're going to get Google-level reliability. We're going to get Google-level innovation. We're going to get— so Um, so anyway, Joseph, I wanted to just, you know, uh, respond to you and let you say that I don't think it's a lack of appreciation on the part of those of us who are involved here on YouTube. I think it is an, uh, an elevation of our expectations of what this company is going to be like, particularly with young people at the helm. I, I do expect that young people at the helm means people thinking about doing things in different ways. So Um, that was the, that was the key to, to my questioning. And when I heard your response, I thought, well, yes, I understand it may sound like we're, you know, bitter and twisted, uh, and just generally angry, but I think it has, uh, there's a little more to it. And so those are my thoughts about it. So, um, thanks for watching as always, and take care. Bye.
