At DecisionOne, back when it was called Bell Atlantic Business System’s Services, I was part of the team that grew its intranet. We did it without MIS approval, right under their noses, to satisfy the needs of our users and of management. We had to build it, and support for it, grassroots up, due to the lock on resources. Someday soon I hope to write the sequel to “How I Got A Career”, to detail our effort a bit, what it ment for us and our business at the time. I believe the experience, and lessons learned, have stuck with me. At least I hope so.

the cluetrain manifesto – chapter one – Internet Apocalypso:

The autonomous PC challenged the hegemony of mainframe computer systems and enabled the development of quick solutions that could end-run the infamous MIS-bottleneck – the fact that it could take months for computer applications to be created and executed to deliver needed information. Then IT management discovered the LAN, which delivered another layer of utility. However, instead of leveraging this new resource for the benefit of “users” – even that word is an artifact of the mentality – the IT department largely used the LAN to reestablish control over information access and work environments.

Now, many companies are doing the same thing again with the intranet. You get this rule-book mindset – the corporation’s common look and feel, logo placement, legal number of words on each Web page. Whatever. It’s all so cramped and constipated and uninviting. Dead. The people who actually built the intranet – created the content that makes it valuable – bail out, looking for another, more open system. And today that’s easy to find.

Remember the context for all this. Twenty years ago, or even five, only corporations could provide the kind of resources needed to process even modest volumes of information. The cost of such systems was a significant barrier to entry for new businesses that might become competitors. But today individuals have this kind of power in their rec rooms. And they can get all the Internet they can eat for a few bucks a month. If the company doesn’t come through with the kind of information and delivery that turns them on – provides learning, advances careers, and nurtures the unbridled joy of creation – well, hey, they’ll just do it elsewhere. Maybe in the garage.

This sort of thing has already been happening for a while now, of course, but there’s more on the way, and not just from the usually suspected quarters. To understand what’s really happening on the Internet, you have to get down beneath the commercial hype and hoopla, which – though it gets 90 percent of the press – is actually a late arrival. From the beginning, something very different has been brewing online. It has to do with living, with livelihood, with craft, connection, and community. This isn’t some form of smarmy New Age mysticism, either. It’s tough and gritty and it’s just beginning to find its voice, its own direction. But it’s also difficult to describe; as the song says, “It’s like trying to tell a stranger about rock and roll.” And it’s next to impossible to understand unless you’ve experienced it for yourself. You have to live in the Net for a while.

At this level, things are often radically other than they appear. A new kind of logic is emerging, or needs to. I call it gonzo business management – paradox become paradigm. We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto, and we might as well get used to it. There’s a huge opportunity here for individuals to keep their day jobs but at the same time to indulge their natural human bent for self-expression.

Companies that try to prevent this sort of creativity within their firewalls need to have their collective heads examined. Conversely, companies that foster and encourage it will win big. The best software, design, music, graphics, writing – elegant, artistic, fantastically interesting and valuable content – are coming out of places where people feel their creativity is valued. Places where inspiration is paramount and posturing means nothing.