Executive blogging

This may be not the most recent article but it contains a very useful perspective for executives who may be experimenting with or considering blogging. Trevok Cook of Corporate Engagement explains the 'chicken and egg' situation most executives faces at the moment in their communication with the external world.

I think the main barrier is that most executives are uncomfortable in an unstructured and uncontrolled environment and blogging looks like that. When they do media interviews they rehearse heavily and practice 'on-message' techniques. They are in an environment where their words will be pored over and will be turned on them if it appears they have strayed from the message. In short, they are imprisoned in the communications world that most bloggers rebel against.

Bloggers are conversationalists, executives do set-pieces. Even if they did blog, most of them would still come across as stitched-up, so maybe they shouldn't blog unless they are willing to relax. But I believe they should blog, confidence in Boards, CEOs and senior management is a major consideration for investors and blogs seem to me a way of building those relationships and engendering confidence. Once a few start blogging the rest will follow and we will find that the stitched-up stuff was mostly a response to the gatekeeper role of the media, once that role is diluted executives will be able to loosen up a little more. We're in a chicken and egg situation at the moment."

Others are weighing in on the issue. DivaBlog makes a similar point using as parallel comparision the Bush/Cheney '04 Campaign blog:

Second, there are good reasons why executives, as legal officers of an organization, have to be very careful what they actually say in public. Extending the Presidential example (and assuming that the President actually had time to blog) imagine pundits combing over every entry looking for clues to his state of mind on any number of issues. Imagine fluctuations in the stock market if every Presidential blog were analyzed for references..."That's the third time this month he's mentioned having Oatmeal at breakfast instead of Corn Flakes...Oat futures are on the rise". Extend your consideration of this issue and you'll see that it would be pretty hard to write a casual blog (as Microsoft blogger Rob Scoble said recently in his comments on self-censoring).

He also discusses the impact blogging has had large corporations like Sun:

Third (and not to be underestimated) is the cultural shift involved in blogging. For many many years official caution in public communication has been the norm. Sun has gone so far as to famously issue a new official policy to encourage open blogging, but its definitely still a new concept to most Sun employees. There is a blogspace behind the Sun firewall and some executives (notably John Fowler) are starting to show up there. And of course there is at least one Sun VP and Fellow with a public blog, James Gosling.

So, while I agree with Glynn that it will be a great thing when the senior Sun executives start blogging, it may be awhile before we see lots of spontaneous executive blogs. Still the medium is creating a shift inside Sun and other companies. Traditional assumptions and practices are being re-examined, which was one of my hopes when I and others started promoting the idea of blogging to Sun.

When you are starting up a company, building everything as you go along and imprinting your personality all over the place, a blog seems just the ticket. But imagine taking a seat on the board of a large corporation, a blog would seem a loaded gun to the rest of the executives. The thing is, it does not have to be that way as long as one remembers the legal responsibilities and limits and does not shrink from occassional controversy to stand by his/her point. Jonathan Schwartz of Sun Microsystems seems to be doing just fine...