I recently started following a colleague of mine at another firm on Twitter, and have noticed that he seems to be have had a bit of trouble starting an external blog because of some unease by his company. My guess is that the company has two main objections: 1. They are probably a bit weary of “losing control” of the message that he might put out (Let’s be honest, does any organization really have control over “the message”?) and 2. that if it’s officially sanctioned, he might spend his time at work blogging instead of “working”. This morning, I’ve been thinking more about the second issue.
I would bet that a lot of organizations and companies are wary of blogging during work hours. On one hand, this is understandable, especially given most people’s perception of blogs in general (I’ll call this the LiveJournal or Xanga perception): blogs are a the opinions of someone with too much time on their hands.
However, I tend to think of this limited thinking as a short-sighted (and actually deeply hypocritcal way of thinking). I’ll start with this: I use my blog to think about my job, my responsibilities, and as a way to put some of my thoughts into words. These thoughts and musings ultimately are beneficial to my job because they help me think through the problems and issues that I face in my responsibilities every day. In short, I do my thinking here to get something down on digital paper (and hoping potentially that someone else might read it and suggest something as well, but I do see value even without comments).
So what it comes down to, in my mind, it is silly to come down on a platform for thinking. I’ll put it this way: most people probably do their thinking in emails or Word; why is it any different if I choose to use WordPress as my personal library of thoughts? A blog is just a communications tool; what you do with it is the important part and, thus, organizations should judge their worth on content rather than just blanket policies banning the use of a given platform.
I’ll conclude first by saying, yes, I do recognize the in client-service organizations, deliverables and client service comes first. I won’t be blogging if I have to get a deliverable done or am against a deadline. However, on days where I have time to sit back and contemplate job-related issues, why is it a problem that I do it here, where other people can see and might be able to help me develop my ideas further? Ultimately, I think it comes down to a communications problem on the part of bloggers, including myself: people just don’t understand the purpose of blogs. Personally, I think I now understand that bloggers should try to be more explicit in their defense of blogging, especially to wary organizations.
