By Howard Oliver, Principal, What If What Next™

Very few executives -only the very best actually- actually recognize the need to encourage reasonable behavior of resistance from their employees. Those corporate statesmen are not afraid to encourage out-of-the box thinking to foster innovation and change. They know that the age of productivity by efficient bureaucracy is behind us; they know that what they need is good ideas, and that managers assigned from the top on the basis of their ability to make their numbers are not often very good at identifying good ideas and nurturing innovation.  Wikis and blogs are two tools to consider for enhanced social networking and communications within your organization.

How can a Blog help internal communications?

• Decreases deficiencies found in traditional knowledge transfer
• Improves distribution of information throughout your organization
• Captures information for short and long term reference
• Fosters cross-discipline communication of information
• Localizes information and increases findability
• Accommodates collaborative discussions

Don’t over think blogs. They’re not a profound means of expression. They’re just a tool—another arrow in the communications quiver. If this were a real blog, I’d keep things short and stick to one topic per posting.  Here are ground rules for blogging:

Know why you’re blogging.

• To establish your company, and yourself, as a thought leader on a subject
• Because you like to write
• To demystify your department
• To organize projects or topics without the clutter of e-mail

Know your reader. No one wants to blog in a void. You need to know who you would like to have read your blog, and why. Keep your blog behind the firewall. Your tone and topics can be less guarded that way. And the posts your blog receives will tend to be less rancorous because corporate bloggers are more likely to post under their own names. This keeps posts from getting unruly. In a public blog, a C-level executive may want to review posts, if only to keep out spam. Blogs also can be written by more than one person. Blogs can be organized around specific topics or even specific development projects, with multiple contributors. Be authentic - you’re not writing a white paper or selling the company message. Do not write in your blog that you wouldn’t put in an e-mail or say at a client dinner.

It’s best for C-level executives to blog for a few weeks in the privacy of their own computer, to see if they even have time for a post a week. Send a couple of potential blog entries to people you trust, to see if they think the tone works

Blogging isn’t formal, but at most companies, business casual doesn’t mean you can show up to the office in a tie-dye T-shirt, either. It’s informal only in the sense that it’s easy to post information. It’s still a business form of communication.

Blog best practices to project news on a weekly schedule:

• Monday - Projects (project updates, team recognition and launches)
• Tuesday - Sales (e.g. new deals signed, new opportunities, pitches, proposal work)
• Wednesday - Operations (e.g. finance, facilities, safety, IT, benefits, recruiting)
• Thursday - The Craft (e.g. best practices, articles, industry stats & trends)
• Friday - Fun Facts (e.g. facts re: personal lives or world events)

Some final tips on blogging

• Keep it short and skimmable
• Get thick skin. Know that your blog will generate comments you might not want to hear. They might even be true. Be ready for them, and acknowledge them when it’s appropriate.
• Blogs are forever or reasonably close to it. Remember that blogs are permanent and searchable.
• Check grammar and spelling.

What is a Wiki?

Wiki's are the simplest and increasingly most flexible repository for shared information and collaboration. A Wiki is a unified system for publishing:

• Many users at once can freely create and edit the content, “edit anything at any time”
• A matrix-based, horizontal navigation created and controlled by users
• Users “gesture” by creating a “linked” page, without necessarily creating content on the gestured page
• Creates cross-links on the fly
• Invites participants to help build the information structurally and within pages
• Edit both content as well as organization of the content without fear of losing old information, “ruining” the page or overwriting good information
• The gift economy

Wiki for collaborative authoring:

• specifications, procedures, glossaries
• goal setting, status updates, meeting notes
• for thought leaders - they are effective in taking institutions from being producers to being innovators.

Wiki for tribal knowledge:

·         best practices, guidelines, resources, tools

·         research, case studies, methodology

·         resources, event news

·         collaborative discussion (Q&A), tracking coverage

·         schedule, tasks, meeting notes, project status

·         research results, contacts, team lists, member profiles

For most of us, internal blogs and wikis present a much smaller soap box. But they’re a useful platform, and one worth getting comfortable standing on.

Howard Oliver

Principal, What If What Next

416-638-8582, holiver@whatifwhatnext.com