Why YouTube? (Part 1)

Well, good morning. This is Tom Guarriello, and I'm recording this video to follow up on a video that I recorded the other day, a response to Geriatric1927, actually his response to John Sutherland's article in The Guardian. And I wanted to talk a little more about the ideas that I alluded to in that video, one of which was that I've been very excited about YouTube because of its potential for business organizations, and I wanted to talk a little bit about what that meant. First, let me start off by just giving you a little bit of background about who I am why these things are important to me. I'm a psychologist, I have a Ph.D. in psychology and have been involved in working with individuals and groups around psychological issues all my career. And about 20 years ago, I got involved in working with organizations as a consultant and I really found that to be a lot of fun and really enjoyed it a great deal. And so for the last 20 years, I've been working with organizations, different kinds of organizations, businesses, in helping them to try to create an environment in which they could really deliver great results for their customers. And in, in the process of doing so, to also become great organizations for people to work in. I've always had this kind of dual agenda of helping organizations to succeed by helping them to create a place where people really wanted to thrive, where people could thrive and could really create and, and to flourish. I think work is a great place for us to express ourselves and It presents us with that opportunity. Now we know, unfortunately, many, many, many work organizations don't approach their responsibilities of delivering value with that same kind of comprehensive thinking about how to make the organization something great for people. But I've always thought that was a great way to try to do both. So I've been working on that project, if you will, all of my professional career and certainly for the last 20 years in working with organizations. And so when, you know, I'm going to fast forward to 1999 because in 1999 there was an event that I thought really captivated— I'm sorry, really captured a lot of the thinking that had been rattling around in my head in different forms pretty clearly, and that was the publishing of a book— first, actually, not a book, a a website called the Clue Train Manifesto. Now, those of you who have not read the Clue Train Manifesto, I heartily recommend that you go to www.cluetrain.com. That's C-L-U-E-T-R-A-I-N, cluetrain.com, because there, posted in April of 1999, is the original manifesto written by Doc Searles and Dave Weinberger and Chris Locke and Rick Levine. And so what was the Cluetrain Manifesto? Let me just read you a couple of the very first lines of the Cluetrain Manifesto. And the very first line is: A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed. As a result, markets are getting smarter and getting smarter faster than most companies. Goes on to say, those— these markets are conversations. Their members communicate in language that is natural, open, honest, direct, funny, and often shocking. Whether explaining or complaining, joking or serious, The human voice is unmistakably genuine. It can't be faked. Well, that resonated pretty powerfully with me, especially when you consider that the consulting firm that my colleagues and I created right about that time is called TruTalk. We called our our firm True Talk because we believe that the opportunity for real dialogue within organizations and within the network that that organization creates, a network of customers, suppliers, inside, outside, all of those conversations could be characterized by a different kind of tone. And the tone is one that was beautifully captured there in those first few lines from Cluetrain. So, okay, so now for the last, what is it, 7 years, I've been working with different kinds of organizations, often in design-related kinds of work, to try to create environments in which those sorts of conversations could really take place, they could really happen. And sometimes it's, you know, you're able to encourage that to happen, sometimes you're not, But the work is the work. Okay, now, so what happens? Here comes YouTube now, what, a year ago? Is it a year? I don't know. But here comes YouTube. And in the last 6 months in particular, ramp up, very important cultural phenomenon, very important opportunity for people to express that voice that Locke, Searle's Weinberger and Levine are talking about there in Cluetrain to have that voice really come across. And so if— by the way, the Cluetrain Manifesto is made up of 95 theses, kind of like the— well, never mind. And the first thesis is markets are conversations. So if, in fact, markets are conversations, then one of the things that businesses need to be able to do is to figure out how and where to have conversations with their customers, with their prospective customers, with people in their supply chain network, to have conversations in the kind of language that isn't characterized by the, you know, kind of glossy marketing corporate speak that we hear so often in corporations, but it's characterized by something else, characterized by this kind of authentic voice that we recognize right away when we hear it. And that was what I was commenting on in regard to Geriatric 1927. Here was a guy who was clearly speaking from an authentic center, a place that really, you know, meant something to him, and Here he was being derided for that, for being banal. And the point is, we're all banal. Our daily, our day-to-day lives are just our day-to-day lives. They're not— we're not anybody special. We're not anything. We're not celebrities, and we are just simply people trying to connect with one another. And our work is a place in which that connection can really take place. So, so seeing the kinds of things that I've been seeing on YouTube, not the Paris Hilton kind of, you know, professional, or even the— look, it's great that we can always check out the, the cool segments from The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, you know, the next day, and that there's always a repository of for this great information here on YouTube. That's terrific. I mean, it's wonderful that there's that place. Excuse me. But the thing that I find most intriguing about this community is the way that real people can talk to one another in real ways and try to connect. So, and I think that the more business leaders are able to pay attention to that, to listen to the kind of authentic voices that make up part of that conversation. And the more that businesses can begin to engage in something that feels like real conversation between themselves and these people in the community, the better off they're going to be. Well, I see that it's time for me to knock off, so I'm going to continue this a little bit, but until I do, thanks, it's Tom, see you