Blogging Meets Organizational Design and Development

Just a question, really.

I wonder how long it will be before there’s acknowledgment of blogs, blogging and its dynamics in the workplace ?

I’m aware of a range of initiatives that have geared up to introduce blogging into business areas, and for the fenestration of the workplace.

Recent months have given us more profile for desktop search (Copernic, Google, X1, and now Miicrosoft), new blogging applications (Silkblogs, MSN Spaces, Qumana, Blogjet, Ecto for Windows), increased visibility for wikis (Forbes and various other business magazines), more knowledge-worker friendly research (High Beam). And then there are those who have been at it for a while, such as SocialText or HeadShift. All this activity has been accompanied by comprehensive industry reporting by Morgan Stanley, and the birth of a spate of blog consulting offers (InisdeBlogging, Larix Consulting, Bryght)

If blogging is essentially about conversation online (which is readily demonstrable when on a blog with an established commenting community), and it’s understood that useful and effective dynamics develop that help participants stay on topic, learn and acquire a knowlege base that’s readily accessible via posted links, then the seemingly obvious question is why hasn’t blogging been taken up more readily, more quickly ?

I’ve written before about my belief, from my years as an organizational consultant (design, development, change), that blogging is an obvious way to address many leadership development issues as well as the fundamentals of an open, flexible, healthy workplace. How can it not be ? Most of us who have been blogging know that obvious cranks and trolls are dismissed pretty readily, even if things can get stupid every once in a while. So what’s different from the real world ? Group and individual dynamics are pretty similar in real life. Things get done by having conversation with other people - customers, fellow employees, suppliers, vendors, and so on. And we’re told. repeatedly that trust and relationship are touchstones of todays transparency-age business and workplace environment. Guess what many blogs are good at - yes, building trust and relationships.

Th obvious response to this from a command-and-control mindset is distrust - about the revealing of corporate secrets, or employees dissing the company, its products or services or fellow employees or higher-ups … or of the distraction or perceived “waste of time”, the blogorrhea that many might think is the essence of blogging.

That’s another interesting area of enquiry …. just how much control, other than through ideas, vision and values, can be exercised over employees, work groups and entire organizations when virtually all the workers are involved with their work via interlinked networks. Even though integrated workplace systems like PeopleSoft and SAP are everywhere, these applications tend to be highly structured and don’t provide the kind of architecture, ease-of-use and mindspace conducive to purposeful conversations. But that structure does ensure a fair bit of control, from the design of the business processes and workers’ interaction with that system.

Any type of control other than the structure of the porcesses and information system comes from established practices and culture. And this is the nub of the issue … millions or billions are spent on leadership development and culture change, notably in the areas of communications skills and competency models so that employees will think outside of boxes, be accountable, speak truthfully, be proactive and demonstrate leadership capability at whatever level of the organization.

Blogging is about conversation, and the exchange of information and ideas … it’s not much of a stretch to imagine a project-focused blog, with the updateable and annotatable Gantt Chart as a link in the sidebar, as well as an easily-updated status report for each project team member, and RSS feeds or email notifications keeping each and every member fully in the flow of the project’s evolution. fenestration, or putting windows into the membrane, of the workplace, that’s what blogs can do.

Give all of this three or five more years, that many more pre-digital employees retired, that many more always-on newbies coming into the workforce, better tools and applications … will conversations still be needed and happening in the workplace ? Are purpose-built configurations of these tools and caopabilities more effectyive than disjointed, context-thin email and structured portals ? In my opinion, yes … clearly.

Will all of this activity and the continued take-up of blogs, wikis and related derivatives … will all this have an impact on HR and organizational design and development consulting, and new practices. I can’t see how it won’t. The funny thing today is, I think, that many of the responses are available, and have been around for a while, but the context of two-wayness, the “hyperlinks subvert hierarchy” aspect has been vigorously denied or ignored … to date. Why else is leadership development about listening, authenticity, and values ? Why else are many expensive and often ineffective decisions or approaches taken other than to protect perceived power and control ?

There are examples almost every day of the ways that interconnected interaction has led or is leading to changing business models, new consrtructs for understanding and administering intellectual property, shifts in power due to the transparency and vigor of online communities. Can organizations keep their fingers in the dike for a lot longer, or forever ? Maybe … but what’s the point ?

Why not recognize the widespread presence of this way of connecting, exchanging and yes, working … online, and begin to look at the design and development issues in a forever-more interconnected and interlinked workplace and markets ?