Do We Really Want CEO's Blogging?

A letter to Business Week in response to the magazine's cover story on blogging asks... "Is this really what we want our corporate leaders spending hours a day doing?" Yes. Definitely. In thinking this through, it's important to put a corporate leader's blogging efforts in context. Step back from the new technology and all the attention the software gets and consider what blogging is: Communication. Ask most CEOs what their job is, and they'll tell you that communication represents a massive part of their responsibilities. (I once heard a CEO say the letters stand for "customers, employees, and owners," the primary audiences with whom a CEO must be engaged. I liked that.) Blogs represent a new channel for communication. Not the only channel, to be sure, but a new one that may be better, in some cases, than the older channels. Imagine a CEO who rejected the telephone as a means of talking with investors just because it was new and different! Neville and I interviewed the chairman of Holland's Tulip Computers, who echoed this sentiment. His job, he said, was to communicate, and blogs provide him with a channel to do that more easily and in more of a two-way environment. So, given that CEOs strategize the use of blogs as a communication channel that enhances or improves communication, yes, you bet. That's what I want my corporate leaders spending hours a day doing. Shel Holtz is principal of a shel of my former self