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Field Use Of Blogs, Wikis, Etc. And The Importance Of Getting The Context Right

Dr. Biren Saraiya, MD has a good, detailed post on his experiences with using blogs, wikis, and other technologies over at the SAHRI blog (a non-profit). I love to see both frank positives and negatives about the use of different technologies by real practitioners. Technology companies cannot build products in vacuums, and his comments are great feedback.

What is very important about introducing technologies is getting the context right. Although I love to push technology (since I work for a blog vendor), the management consultant in me actually comes first - that means you have to try to understand a problem first before you can try to solve it. The work structure for SAHRI that that Dr. Saraiya conveyed to me about his organization is key to understanding what will work and what won't for his org:

--- our collaborators will be geographically disconnected
--- our collaborators will have busy (limited time for synchronous collaboration)
--- it will be long term committments (for any given project)
--- most of them will be technologically naive.

Another key to think about here, which is not discussed, is to figure out where to get leverage. It is often very hard to do this in non-profit environments. That said, a systematic shakedown or analysis of which levers create the biggest bang for the buck is worthwhile. Inexpensive communication and collaboration tools like blogs, wikis, and audio conferencing seemed to provide great benefit for very low entry-costs and minimal risk.

More Thoughts On Having An Online Presence And Negotiating

During a recent deal negotiation,  I found interesting to reflect on two points in the book, "The Virtual Handshake". From the book, the points are (brackets added by me for clarity):

• "... several academic studies have found that people like each other better when they first meet virtually than when they meet face to face." (Source A)
• "Participants [in remote negotiating scenarios] who were members of the same business school were much less likely to hit a dead end than people who were negotiating across business schools (Stanford versus Kellogg)." (Source B)

The above two items are counterposing effects of doing business virtually or online.

Instinctively, I always try to make my blog very visible to clients, prospects, and partners. With clients, I have found that people tend to know a little bit more about me before I go into a situation via my blog. This can be especially good if I am walking into an adverse business environment or management situation.

What happens when I negotiate against someone though? Am I afraid they will find out about tricks that I use or where my weak points might be via my blog?

The short answer is that one has to know enough tricks to keep people on their toes.

More seriously though, most business development relationships that I work in are multi-issue negotiations. I think it generally makes sense to take a principle-centered negotiating stance in these situations. It's about crafting a total deal, not about playing an ego card to win every deal point. One can convey one's principles in an informative way through blog writings.

That said, in a recent negotiating scenario with a Columbia MBA, I had to think hard about that second bullet point above. When the negotiation was a little rocky, I sent my counterpart a snip from the second bullet point. She ignored it.

Fortunately, I think we'll both be able to look back at these times and laugh (in a good way). 

Source A - "Can you see the real me? Activation and expression of the "true self" on the Internet" by J. A. Bargh et. al.)
Source B - Carnegie Mellon professor Don Moore et. al. in "Long and Short Routes to Success in Electronically Mediated Negotiations: Group Affiliations and Good Vibrations").

On Monday Will Run Q&A With A CIO Blogger

This coming Monday, I will run a Q&A with Will Weider, CIO of Affinity Health Systems, who blogs at The Candid CIO. Affinty Health System is network of 17 clinics, three hospitals, a long-term care facility and a health plan, so it's quite of mix of clinic, ambulatory, etc. environments which not all healthcare providers have. The first Q&A at The CIO Weblog will provide some insight as to why he blogs, what blogs he follows, and his perspective on employee blogging. If you are interested in healthcare and/or a case of CIO blogging, be sure to tune in next week. Thanks in advance to Will for making himself available!

New Paper On Corporate Blogging By Deutsche Bank Research

Stefan points folks to a new paper by DB Research entitled, "Blogs: The new magic formula for corporate communications". Some interesting charts in here. Also a nice chart of blog growth in Germany.

On CIO And C-Level Blogging

Charlie Russo, News Writer for SearchCIO.com, recently interviewed me for his article "C-Level Bloggers Follow The Rules". The article includes some thoughts on why there aren't more CIO bloggers out there. Regardless of public blogging, one has to wonder why there isn't more intranet blogging in IT organizations given the benefits. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that it is more atypical for hosted blogging solutions to have built in intranets.

Handling Employee Blogs ... Plus C-Level Censoring Of Blogs

Very good article by Michael Maslanka, a lawyer in Dallas (also a Cornell alum) specializing in labor and employment law, on tapping into the power of employee blogs. The article is also interesting because it considers some ramifications of censoring blogs per different state laws. This should be of particular interest to both those looking at the growth of corporate blogs and 21Publish customers, as 21Publish has been helping customers set up turnkey, hosted employee blogs portals such as Mercury Interactive and PackNation / Summit Publishing (more big organization names in the US to be announced by the end of this month ... knock on wood). A very interesting snip here:

Yes, a C-level executive can blot-out a blogger. Butbe careful. Although Texas has no restriction on disciplining or firingemployees for blogging, doing so in other states is more problematic.New York law prohibits discipline or discharge based on off-duty,out-of-office activity, which presumably includes blogging. The testcase is out there, just waiting to be sprung on an unsuspectingemployer. Or look at employees using blogs to discuss wages orbenefits, or a much disliked supervisor, with other employees. If thereis any suggestion that the blogger is expressing a view shared by otheremployees, then he's arguably engaged in protected activity under theNational Labor Relations Act (which also covers employees without aunion) and can't be fired or disciplined for it.

On Organizational Design

BusinessPundit has a thought provoking post entitled "Management By Tweaking". Part of the post says:

... That leads me to wonder, why are we so concerned with massive change if it might not be needed? When things aren't going right, companies often have reorganizations, layoffs, etc., and I'm not sure that is always necessary ...

My personal experiences with getting organizational design training on the job has generally been bad. Although I am all for learning on the job, I have found that few companies can provide good foundational training in this area.

Unfortunately, I also suspect that organizational design theory may be a weak point for some business schools. At the University of Chicago, I took an elective course entitled something like the "Strategy and Structure of Organizations" (an invaluable course for me), but it was not a course chosen by most students who instead wanted pure strategy courses that might help them with the strategy consulting jobs at firms like BCG, McKinsey, and Bain.

Some of the most useful principles I've encountered in organizational design include:

• Organizational structure stems from strategy
• Functional organizations may be used to share resources across a variety of areas
• Business unit organizations may be used to define self-sufficient units / money machines
• Differences associated with financial control organizations versus strategic control organizations should be deliberately implemented.

Do you have any favorites?

Why Call It Web 2.0?

Via Alexander Muse at the Texas Venture Capital Blog. BusinessWeek posts (boldface added by me):

But Tim O'Reilly, whose publishing company runs the Web 2.0 conference, makes an impassioned defense that goes beyond mere self-interest. He notes that the term has helped define a new generation of technologies whose social nature differs qualitatively from the broadcast-oriented first generation of Web technologies.

I think that BusinessWeek captures it nicely. But as Alexander point out in his post, some should be concerned that many people have no idea what others are talking about when referring to "Web 2.0". This new generation of technologies gives new meaning to the term "generation gap".

And yes, I do (personally) consider 21Publish a Web 2.0 company.

Legal World Of Blogs, Blog RFPs, and Why I Blog In Different Places

Thought I would share some perspectives on why I blog at my personal TypePad account and at my work 21Publish account. Functionally, the blogging platforms between the two companies are very similar in when comparing the TypePad Pro features to the user-level blog features of 21Publish. The 21Publish platform is more targeted at group blogging and blog communities, however. This is why the 21Publish platform has two layers. A portal layer (on which entire portion of the main 21Publish website is built) and user-level blogs that subtend to the community (described here). As I have mentioned before, there is also built-in community intranet and group reading functions.

But back to the core of why I use two blog platforms. One blog is personal. The other blog is work.

My work agreement with 21Publish has specific intellectual property conditions regarding blogs and blog content. An an example, here's what one of these clauses may look like (not construed to be legal advice, just to illustrate that the distinction may need to be spelled out):

Ownership of Work. All copyrights, patents, trade secrets, or other intellectual property rights associated with any ideas, concepts, techniques, inventions, processes, or works of authorship developed or created by [individual] during the course of performing work shall belong exclusively to [company]. Information published on the websites or blogs of [individual] shall be considered the property of [individual]. Information published on the websites or blogs of [company] shall be considered the property of [company].

These intellectual property rights are only one of the things that needs to be considered when blogging. Other things that may need to be considered are things like modification of content by either party. Who owns the modifications? Who owns any liability? I was just talking with an organization the other day that needs to run blog posts through its legal department. Surprised that that has not killed blogging in the organization. At least there may be some evidence that blogging has not achieved its full potential because of such a stringent workflow.

A second reason why I have a 21Publish blog is related to handling blog RFPs and sales prospects for 21Publish. As this part of the process, I can direct people to private-branded blogs we have done (includes graphic design, layout, etc.) and more shrink-wrap sales (e.g., use credit card to purchase). Some people have a hard time realizing that 21Publish does enterprise deals like the former, thus I've made some adjustments here until we update the shop and main portions of the 21Publish website.

A third reason why I have a 21Publish blog, aside from sales prospects, ownership issues, etc. ... well I've tried to develop a flavor at this blog that is more focused on non-profits, social networking, etc. here. My other blog is more general management-, management consulting-, and entrepreneurial-focused. The 21Publish blog is much newer to me (having joined two months ago). Still trying to find my sweetspot.

I am planning to start a new blog (yikes) as related to a new, 21Publish customer (knock on wood ... hope everything goes well). More details to come.

My Job Is Not To Scare People Away From Blogging

... but people should be informed about crazy dynamics that can occur. Similar things can happen in many other contexts, but people should be aware that situations like these can arise. See my blog post at my other blog. 

Quality Or Quantity (Of Contacts) From The Virtual Handshake (Internet Stop 1)

I'm about a third of the way through the book, "The Virtual Handshake" (see blog) by David Teten and Scott Allen, and I find myself bookmarking practically every other page because the book is full of practitioner info, research studies in universities, stories, and unique perspectives from different walks of life.

The topic of the book is opening doors and closing deals online. The book is not targeted at programmers. In the words of the authors:

Our book is particularly relevant to people in roles that depend on relationships: professional investors seeking deals, CEOs seeking business partners, investment bankers seeking capital, salespeople seeking customers, and jobseekers searching for their dream job.

"Quality or Quantity?" is the title of a section in the book concerning personal relationships and networks. This section captures a key value proposition to online technology use. The closing paragraph of the section reads:

"Technology now allows social networks to make a quantum leap forward in breaking the old trade-off between quality and quantity - you can now increase both, without compromising either one," says Contact Network Corporation CEO Geoffrey Hyatt. Learning to write more effective e-mails will help you increase the Strength of your ties, without spending too much time on those relationships. Building a large mailing list similarly allows you to increase the Number without spending significant additional time. Using technology to expand your number of weak ties is a theme we will return to repeatedly in the book.

Does it sound unbelieveable? To be frank, it does on the surface. How one get more of both quality and quantity?

Although not a perfect analogy, I liken the virtual handshake concept to a virtual marble concept that engineers used when inventing the concept of error correcting codes (e.g., Reed Solomon codes) for encoding compact disk information. Fill up a container, say a jar, with marbles. There will be a limit to the number of marbles that can get into the jar. There will be spaces in-between the marbles that constitute deadloss space. One can get more virtual marbles into the space by mathematically allowing the marbles to merge, blend and overlap given certain rules. As it turns out, under certain conditions, there is not a tradeoff between space limitations and the number of marbles one can get into the space (there is a new mathematical bound of course). You can get more of everything by eliminating and better understanding the structure of deadloss space. The rules have changed in some sense.

Concepts are remotely similar (but much more tangible) in the book "The Virtual Handshake". How can you increase quality and quantity of contacts? Though technology. The email concept above is just one of the concepts that may work for you. Or if one is not comfortable with that concept, perhaps there may be twist of the concept or another concept in the book that works for you.

I'll be blogging more about this great book. As a person who hates blogging and email to some extent (this may be a surprise to people), my next topic (Internet Stop 2) will likely highlight some differences between offline and online networking. Stay tuned.

About 21Publish, Blog Portals, and Blogging Communities

21Publish provides a hosted blogging solution that enables organizations to easily set up blog portals and private-label blog communities. The 21Publish solution is distinguished from individual blogging platforms and is excellent for applications such as group blogging, citizen journalism applications, and public & private blog communities. The company is a spin-off of 20six the leading provider of weblogs in Europe, with active communities in Germany, Netherlands, France and the UK. 21Publish recently announced expansion efforts in the US markets, and the company hosts points of presence in both US and European markets. For further information on the company and featured blog portals, please visit http://www.21publish.com or http://www.21publish.de.

More information about the 21Publish platform as distinguished from traditional blogging platforms can be found at http://www.21publish.com/services/default .

Blogs by persons from the management team (and sit within the blog portal at http://www.21publish.com) are located at:
Stefan Wiskemann (CEO) - http://stefan.21publish.com
Steve Shu (COO) - http://www.21publish.com/sshu