Wednesday December 08, 2004

Group Morale and Blogging

This is the only the second Edelman blog I've read. But again I read it and it got me thinking.... He said among other things that “Blogs are just one aspect of social networking, along with news groups and mailing lists. The biggest challenge for companies is not the technology, it is understanding the culture.” He was talking about a companies external interactions but I have been thinking about how this also applies within a company.

I bet you could draw a correlation between how many bloggers there are in an organization and the culture / morale of that organization. I am talking here about departments with in the organization. If people are talking about what they are doing and in fact are engaged enough to blog about it I think it is likely that the organization has an open culture and pretty good morale. If your department has no bloggers what does that say?

I've been thinking a lot about what happens to companies as they get bigger. When you are small it is easy to talk to anyone and ask them what is going on. Everyone can feel like they are a part of the success of the company. As you get bigger it is easy to get cut off. It isn't as easy to ask someone what is going on. Of course the beauty of the network is that you can still email someone but it gets harder when you have a hierarchy and you don't know who to ask. I never hesitate to email a question to almost anyone. An awful lot of people are intimidated about asking questions. Then htere is the fact that even if you ask you don't always get answers.If you are not careful the company becomes not a group of connected people making something happen but a bunch of individuals to whom the company is just a job.

For me blogging has really helped me get back to being connected. I've made contacts with people with whom I wouldn't have had conversations otherwise. The JDS change acceptance work has helped too. I've talked to lots of people all over Sun. There is still the challenge though of how to get a question answered. Suppose hypothetically that I want to make sure that the JDS vision we have developed as a part of our change acceleration effort is aligned with Sun's bigger vision for JDS. How do I start that conversation? Who do I talk to? For us to be highly aligned there need to be lots and lots of these kinds of conversations, lots of questions and answers, lots of blogging. (2004-12-08 17:41:26.0) Permalink