Karmic Influence
Wednesday, July 5th, 2006In the Church of the Customer Blog, Jackie Huba recently posted The Influence of One, which describes a series of events that were kicked off by the activities of Jupiter Research.
The basic story is this: Jupiter claimed that their research indicated that 70% of large companies will implement corporate blogs by the end of the year. This claim caused a Blink reaction by many and was enough to drive several into action to rebuke the claim.
Huba goes on to tell that the blogging community carried this story forward like wildfire. The moral of the story: had Jupiter taken the moment to speak to the person who had issue with their claim, the entire process may have been diffused.
I would go on to say that there is another aspect that makes this event interesting. Jupiter over-stepped its center of gravity. When pushed on the subject, they could have reacted in a health human mannor and allowed themselves to tumble and then recover. Instead, they took the same corporate attitude that removes the humanity from the message.
In today’s market, there is nothing that bloggers and humans dislike more than the lack of humanity in conversation. We heard the early support of this concept with Cluetrain and daily in the blogosphere. There is no other place where Karma has a more tangible presence: What you send out, you will receive back many times over.
The fact that the message was about blogging, a tool that is used by humans who use it to communicate… should have been a red flag to anyone who was thinking about over stating or over-exerting their position. Nothing spreads like drama. The more intense the drama, the farther and faster a story will spread.
We all need to remind ourselves that we must seek to be human, truthful, and respectful in all things. In today’s world, failure to do so can harm us so much more than it would have even five (5) years ago.
