Blogging for Organizational Change
Robert Cenek
It’s no secret: corporate blogging is poised for take-off!
Coca Cola, one of the most respected and one of the bluest chip firms on the globe, has taken a huge first step in demonstrating the viability of corporate blogs for supporting organization change.
Brisk, a Dutch business magazine, recently interviewed Orlando Ashford, head of HR at Coca-Cola’s US headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, who reported that the firm was using a blog to help promote understanding and dialogue around its vision and mission with its 55,000 employees.
Corporate blogs, especially those featuring the CEO or top management team, hold a number of inherent advantages over other communications vehicles frequently used to spread the new gospel during change efforts.
Blogs:
1. Can promote interactive, circular dialogue in a user-friendly 24×7 fashion;
2. Are seen as a safe, comfortable medium for conveying deeply-felt feelings;
3. Are more time efficient than town hall meetings or formal presentations; and
4. Offer a higher price/value relationship.
Most importantly, blogs offer great potential for combating the tendency for top leadership teams to tremendously under-communicate during periods of change.
John Kotter describes that malady well in this passage taken from Leading Change:
“Gaining understanding and commitment to a new direction is never an easy task, especially in large enterprises. Smart people make mistakes here all the time, and outright failure is not uncommon, even in well-known firms. Managers under-communicate, and often not by a small amount. Or they inadvertently send inconsistent messages. In either case, the net result is the same: a stalled transformation.”
A number of early adopters have already successful demonstrated their viability and effectiveness as a corporate communications medium. This group, a Who’s Who list of corporate America , includes Disney, Microsoft, IBM, McDonalds and Intel. These firms have in fact had intranet-based blogs in place for some time. The Wall Street Journal highlighted the growing trend of CEO blogs this week, which will surely serve as a siren song for other CEO’s to hop on board.
Blogging for organizational change will probably not be adopted by those organizations that see a strong need for senior-level communications to be a carefully staged event with little room for spontaneity. Leaders that see a stronger need for speedy, heart-felt, unvarnished communications with a human face will probably use the medium frequently and religiously – and like their audience, feel good about using the cyber-forum.
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