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Thanks Lauren. So:
1. Blogging is appropriate for internal communications,
and as Tim notes, a low rent app. It is appropriate
for external communications but the corporation is advised
to provide a policy for posts.
2. As in any communication that is not precisely formally
defined, individual initiative is required. The corporation
should reward people who master this informal approach.
3. Discovery is an issue. I would hazard that this
is a content type issue, that is, people who need to
keep up with HR issues subscribe to HR authors, and
so forth, but it is fundamental that anyone be able
to subscribe to anything.
From those perspectives, I believe that blogging can
become a powerful and very cheap means to modify the
culture of any company that has become rigidly
hierarchical with the usual dose of inside cliques
formed over the years. Companies that are profit
restarts with new management can use blogging to
erode the ossified walls of resistance to changes
of direction and performance metrics. Where rewards
have been based on measures of the C2 hierarchy
performance, measures are now oriented to networking
performance. This would be particularly useful in
companies that must develop synergies among the
vertical components, products, sales and marketing.
Being a just-in-time medium, it should also improve
response and adaptation as long as the users become
adept at selection and response. Many a good idea
emerges in the wrong place at the right time for
another unit. Willingness to enable the success
of a neighbor is a hard trait to train into employees
who have previously mastered the direct report and
the closed door meeting. In companies where noone
is anyone who doesn't have a secret, blogging will
be resisted fiercely.
len
From: Lauren Wood [mailto:lauren@textuality.com]
Internal blogs can be made to work under at least one of two
conditions:
1) the authors can post to it and/or be notified of new messages via
email
2) the blog pages are close to (whatever that means in web space)
where they get other documents they need to refer to.
The *necessary* condition for it to work is that the people involved
be motivated. For some people, talking to each other or the outside
world is sufficient. For other people (and particularly if it's
internal) they will need rewards. The rewards vary with the people
and the company. If the blog is meant to end up as a knowledge
repository of some sort, then it's important to reward people for
filling that repository.
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