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Passion, People and Principles

Internal Blogs as a Management Tool

post # 13 — February 4, 2006 — a Managing, Strategy post

I may be coming late to the party and only just catching up, but it occurs to me that blogs could be (are?) an incredibly powerful internal management tool.

Here’s one way I could see it working. There is a blog to which, initially at least, only partners have access. The managing partner (firm leader / practice group leader, whatever you want) could blog regularly about what’s going on in the firm / practice, not just restricted to the formal announcement of new business wins and losses, but actually addressing issues of interest to partners, answering candidly, and allowing partners (anonymously if necessary) to pose questions to firm leadership about what is happening and why things are happening the way they are.

As firms get larger, more dispersed and more complex, the disaffection of partners (in professions and businesses of all kinds) is becoming more evident. I get calls all the time enquiring about my availability to consult on the issue of partners’ unhappiness and their feeling that they are treated like employees in an increasingly corporate culture.

Of course, this feeling exists because it is accurate – partners ARE treated like employees, and a blog would be a way to involve them, provide interactivity and participation, resulting in the feeling of ownership that all firms say they want their partners to feel.

When partners (and other people) say they want more or better internal communication in firms, it doesn’t actually mean that they want to hear more from firm leadership (although that’s how it is usually translated.) What it actually means is that people want to be listened to more – they want the chance to voice their views and to have management take them seriously. Internal blogs would allow this.

Professional firms (along with other types of corporate entities) always SAY they want to be consultative and participative, but the truth is that often managers in such firms are often terrified of participation. They would be frightened of what would be seen as open dialogue and discussion of firm management issues (horrors – open dissent!) However, there probably could be no better way to re-energize today’s bloated partnerships than using today’s technology to engage, enthuse and involve the partners.

And one day – who knows? – firms might act as if non-partners were real citizens, too.

Are any firms out there doing this already?

13 Comments

James Robertson said:

Although we are a small consulting firm, internal blogs are something that we’ve found to be extremely useful.

Mostly in terms of sharing awareness of what is happening. With consultants out on site, or working hard on specific projects, it’s often hard to keep up with what’s happening elsewhere in the office.

So we post short updates on project progress, industry gossip, office changes, etc, etc.

When new staff come on board, they can read through the last month or two of blog entries, to see where the business is at…

This is what I posted back in 2004 when the blogs were setup:

http://www.steptwo.com.au/columntwo/archives/001229.html

posted on February 4, 2006

David (Maister) said:

Thanks, James – a very useful contribution. Anyone else have experience with this?

posted on February 4, 2006

David (Maister) said:

At James Robertson’s (emailed) suggestion, I did a Google search on “k-logs” (otherwise known as knowledge logs.) There’s a lot to be found on using blogs to share knowledge (a BIG topic in professional firms for a decade now) and the technology is ready to be deployed for any firm that wants to use it. See for example, “What is a k-log?”:http://writetheweb.com/Members/gilest/old/123/ as beginning. However, while knowledge management is still discussed (if largely unfulfilled in its promise) there seems (on first sight) to be little discussion of blogs, as I was trying to point out, as a way managing and governing a firm. The point, of course, is that the technology is ready — but are the managers?

posted on February 4, 2006

David (Maister) said:

At the suggestion of James Robertson, I did a Google search on k-logs (otherwise known as knowledge logs.) There’s a lot there on using blogs to share knowledge (a BIG topic in professional firms for a decade now) and the technology is ready to be deployed for any firm that wants to use it.. (See for example, What is a k-log? as a beginning. However, while knowledge management is still discussed (if largely unfulfilled in its promise) there seems (on first sight) to be little discussion of blogs, as I was trying to point out, as a way of managing and governing a firm. The point, of course, is that the technology is ready — but are the managers?

posted on February 4, 2006

Michelle Golden said:

David, Rod Boothby at Ernst & Young is doing some remarkable things with blog technology. Not only is he using it to create conversations, he is structuring it to capture and promote critical information within the firm acting in the manner of the best possible CRM, internally. Mr Boothby is doing this work in a pretty open-source manner sharing all what he is learning along the way with some amazing whitepapers. I think his work will be of great interest to you. You can learn much, much more about him at his blog, here: http://www.innovationcreators.com/ and by downloading his whitepaper (or reading it online) here: http://www.innovationcreators.com/TheTableOfContents.html

Hope you’ll post about what you think after reading it…

posted on February 5, 2006

Paul O'Byrne said:

Like James Robertson, we’ve found blogs are ideal for keeping people informed. There’s only ten of us in our firm but keeping the softer information distributed is tough. Small announcements, updates, tips go in the blog.

I was interested to see Michelle Golden knows of where it can be structured. We haven’t seen the internal blog as a substitue for our KnowledgeBank (we call it that to encourage ‘deposits’ as well as ‘withdrawals’). Blogs are good for quick chatty comments. KM needs more structure, indexing, etc in our experience.

posted on February 6, 2006

Matt Moore said:

IBM has about 400 regular internal bloggers & 18000 people enrolled in the blogging ecosystem – interestingly there are more comments than posts. The value is in conversations started as much as annoucements made.

posted on February 14, 2006

Shaula Evans said:

Stephen Baker has an article in Business Week Online about internal use of corporate blogs—which he has also blogged about in the Business Week blog.

posted on February 15, 2006

Shaula Evans said:

Stephen Baker has an article in Business Week Online about companies’ use of internal blogs. You can find it here

posted on February 15, 2006

Anne Braudy said:

David, I’m thinking the internal partners’ blog might be useful

for some of my clients. Specifically, help me out – (as

someone who doesn’t blog) – do blog services typically include a limited access feature, or would we have to go to another service?

Thanks. Love your stuff, (shorter would be better, though :-)) Anne

posted on February 21, 2006

David (Maister) said:

Anne, I am lucky enough to be supported by a couple of wonderful tech people, Justin Evans and Colin Vernon ) and they have taught me everything I know about blogs just in the last few months. So, I’ll give you a quick answer here based on my understanding, but also ask them to contact you. Don’t worry, they won’t start eagerly soliciting your business. The reason we get on is that they are consummate professionals who always handle themselves appropriately.

Anyway, here goes. The short answer is that you really can set it up any way you want.

A blog is not really a service, it’s just a program that you install and set up. As ever, the trade off is cost versus options.

A lot of people use standard blog software (that’s why many blogs have a similar look and feel) The cost of this is really VERY cheap and quick and easy to install, but you have to shop around for the access features — most of the standard blog software that’s now out is aimed at external uses, and I don’t know which ones (if any) are readily adaptable for the internal blog use that I wrote about, nor what they offer in terms of access.

The other route to go is the one I went, and that’s custom programming (Colin and Justin.) It wasn’t as expensive as it sounds, and my philosophy has always been that if I can make things truly work for me, then I’m not afraid to invest to get it right. If you know my writings, you know I really distrust half-way measures (minimizing the upfront investment by doing things on the cheap almost always leads you to get most of the cost with none of the benefits.)

With a custom approach (which nevertheless uses standard modules) I am able to have an ongoing weekly (or sometimes daily) conversation with Colin and Justin about what’s working for me, what features I like, etc and they are usually implemented within days if not the same day. (For example, I really am not a computer jock, and I really only am comfortable with the commands that are used in Microsoft Word. “The guys” have been able to set it up so the software adapts to me, rather than forcing me to learn new commands.)

We’re in the process of setting up a blog for my wife and her new business. She hasn’t worked outside the home for 25 years, but I’m confident we can set it up so she feels completely comfortable. In fact, only yesterday Colin and Justin were at our home working with Kathy and I figuring out exactly how she likes to operate. You see what I mean, I hope, about the benefits of a custom system.

Anyway, that’s my experience and my view. Hope they help!

David

posted on February 21, 2006

Jon Husband said:

I’d like to add my $.02. I was a Senior Principal at a big global consulting firm (Hay Mgt. consultants) for a bunch of years. This firm, and competitors, do alot around the design of work, if you will, and until very recently (well, still actually) sell and use methodologies to large organizations that are based on the tenets of Taylorism, creating rules .. for org design, for management processes, and such, that do not readily acknowledge the effects of hyperlinks , search engines and easy-to-use collaboration and publishing tools.

If we start from the aphorism “knowledge is power”, the power shift Alvin and heidi toffler wrote about is arguably only now starting to be tangible at the level of collaborative knowledge work, and management of same, in organizations. A recent survey published by The Economist titled “Knowledge and the Company” now argues this (and cites the big consulting firms like Mercer Delta and McKinsey) in the lead article titled “The New Organization”, in which is explored the difference between “organization man” and “networked worker”.

Thomas Malone covers similar ground in his book < a href="http://ccs.mit.edu/futureofwork/">The Future of Work.

Bloggers with a KM or organizational background have been blogging their butts off about thios for a couple of years now, and much of it is related to the ongoing taransition from “command-and-control” to “champion-and-channel”, which is a phrase i developed in my ongoing exploration of a concept I developed a few years ago called wirearchy, as in “from hierarchy to wirearchy”.

There’s no commonly accepted “archy” word for this new set of conditions which is dramatically affecting how we work and live .. but I would argue that blogs and blog-like derivatives will be the way much knowedge work … information sharing and purposeful knowledge construction .. will get done in the medium-term future.

And aplogies in advance for linking to my site .. I usually do not do this, don’t like to blog-whore, as it’s known in the blogosphere, but I thought there’s the possibility you might find the concept interesting and that you might understand it, given that you nopted the possibility of blogs being powerful tools.

posted on February 25, 2006

David (Maister) said:

This was contributed by Jon Husband (jonhusband@sprint.ca)

I’d like to add my $.02. I was a Senior Principal at a big global consulting firm (Hay Mgt. consultants) for a bunch of years. This firm, and competitors, do alot around the design of work, if you will, and until very recently (well, still actually) sell and use methodologies to large organizations that are based on the tenets of Taylorism, creating rules for org design, for management processes, and such, that do not readily acknowledge the effects of hyperlinks , search engines and easy-to-use collaboration and publishing tools.

If we start from the aphorism “knowledge is power”, the power shift Alvin and Heidi Toffler wrote about is arguably only now starting to be tangible at the level of collaborative knowledge work, and management of same, in organizations. A recent survey published by The Economist titled “Knowledge and the Company” now argues this (and cites the big consulting firms like Mercer Delta and McKinsey) in the lead article titled The New Organization in which is explored the difference between organization man and networked worker.

Thomas Malone covers similar ground in his book The Future of Work

Bloggers with a KM or organizational background have been blogging their butts off about thios for a couple of years now, and much of it is related to the ongoing taransition from command-and-control to champion-and-channel, which is a phrase i developed in my ongoing exploration of a concept I developed a few years ago called wirearchy, as in ‘from hierarchy to wirearchy’. See here

There’s no commonly accepted ‘archy’ word for this new set of conditions which is dramatically affecting how we work and live .. but I would argue that blogs and blog-like derivatives will be the way much knowedge work … information sharing and purposeful knowledge construction .. will get done in the medium-term future.

And aplogies in advance for linking to my site .. I usually do not do this, don’t like to blog-whore, as it’s known in the blogosphere, but I thought there’s the possibility you might find the concept interesting and that you might understand it, given that you nopted the possibility of blogs being powerful tools.

posted on February 25, 2006