Blogging as Management, not Marketing

Most “how-to” guides for company blogging focus on marketing and PR objectives: positioning your organization as a thought leader, or using it as a “free” channel to get company news out there. We have a blog like this at our RISD, but we also have another, behind-the-firewall blog that is used for management, not marketing.

The blog covers vast territory, from the intellectual to the mundane. Most fundamentally, though, it is a place to have an ongoing conversation about the thing we all share — RISD — in ways that don’t necessarily come up in the course of a normal workday. Anyone with a RISD ID — students, faculty, and staff — can join the discussion; we can comment to posts and announcements, request that a topic be initiated, and even (on Tuesdays) comment anonymously. None of the comments are moderated before they are posted, though all are “community policed” with the following rules:

Mom’s Guideline: Please refrain from swearing and other behavior that might make your mother (or father, or guardian) disappointed in you.

Vegas Guideline: What happens in two.risd, stays in two.risd.

Catchup Guideline: Start from the very beginning of the posts/comments to best acclimate yourself before posting.

Lawyer’s Guideline: Everything posted on two.risd needs to comply with the law.

More than a year into this experiment, several of its lessons are now apparent:

1. The medium has meaning. Compared with many companies — where it’s not uncommon to use email to ask a casual question of someone down the hall — RISD has a highly non-digital culture. Today, wariness still abounds at the idea of sharing honest opinions in a digital forum — never mind one moderated by the President. It reminds me of a good conversation I had with Gentry Underwood, who heads IDEO’s Knowledge Sharing practice, about how any internal communication vehicle must be designed to be culturally sensitive — the most advanced isn’t necessarily the best, especially when trying to get people to open up. At this point the blog is like any other social media — it has few participants compared with the many who are onlookers to the dialogue.
2. Get ready for the water cooler to be on display. For the leaders of an organization, the blog provides us instant feedback on management decisions and direction. Some of the whispers of private conversations and reactions are brought out into the open for all to see. Because the feedback channel is instant and visible, it keeps the community’s reaction to decisions present in the minds of decision-makers. “What will happen on the blog?” becomes meeting shorthand for “What will the reaction be?”

When it was first launched, much of managers’ anxiety about this new communication channel focused on the blog’s unmoderated nature — the fact that anyone in the community can post without passing through a filter. But after more than a year, even in a culture that doesn’t shy away from conflict, we can count on one hand the number of inappropriate comments that have violated our rules and needed to be pulled down. Controversial, pointed, and opinionated? Often. But actually breaking the “rules?” Rarely. It seems we learn over and over with new communication channels that human behavior is strikingly constant. People who misbehave are the exception rather than the rule, no matter the medium.

3. Adding dimensions to working relationships. The blog has added dimensions to my relationships with colleagues, revealing opinions that may not otherwise have a forum to come out. In some cases, people are much more outspoken on the blog than they are “in life.”

This has also happened on an institutional level. For managers, the questions arise on the blog make it clear where there is clarity and where clarity is lacking. Usually the blog can’t create clarity on complex management decisions, but it does serve as a catalyst for further offline explanation, either in conversation or in a more formal setting, like a campus-wide meeting. Conversely, often the contents of a campus-wide meeting are posted on the blog for further discussion. The on and offline worlds complement each other to get the word out to a diverse community, and to make it understood.

4. Communication hierarchies are flattened. Unlike the traditional management chain, the blog offers open and equal access to people in all parts of our organization. Because those who are most vocal on the blog may not be those in positions of authority, the perspective of the overall conversation looks different than communication that happens through the usual channels. It is more multifaceted, bringing the widely varying experience of students, faculty, and staff directly into the conversation, and exposing their different vantage points. Yet it is imperative to the make the distinction between communication hierarchies (which are flattened) and actual decision-making powers (which remain intact). In order for the blog to work, the premise that it is for providing input — and not making decisions — has to be made fundamentally clear.

We’re curious how others’ experiments with management-by-blogging have gone. What does your organization do?