altfunction: corporate responsibility. media. technology. creativity.

Naked Conversations: Edelman

Shel Israel and Robert Scoble's book is no longer to be called the Red Couch but Naked Conversations - a good title: provocative and revealing. As part of the research, they've been interviewing consultants who 'get it' [i.e. use blogging for better business]. One of the most recent is with one of my favourites, Richard Edelman.

There's lots in there to chew over, but a few choice quotes struck me:

Note that in the Trust Barometer the third most credible source is “Average Person like Me” so we can be the communications choice for smart companies seeking conversation with their multiple stakeholders...

Talk to critics at NGOs in advance to reach an understanding. Use your employees as your first line of offense. Use a real person as a spokesperson or maybe the winner of a reality show like American Idol. Create synergy among the promotions and talk across the silos, but offer real dialogue, not hot air...

And finally, some good advice on corporate blogging:

There have to be some accepted criteria for bloggers at a company. First, there can be no release of confidential information. Second, there must be a commitment to good conduct--just as a person would not run around naked at the company picnic. Third, there should be some editing function--Derek gets a chance at each of my posts to make sure they are sane. Fourth, there should be real diversity in your designated bloggers so outsiders get a true picture of the firm...

Link: Naked Conversations: Interview: Richard Edelman.

gapingvoid: why corporate blogging works.

A typically pithy post from Hugh McLeod on why corporate blogging works - with diagrams and everything...

I won't quote verbatim here, but have a quick look before reading on below.

Hugh's point 7 is:

Every company's membrane is different, and controlled by a host of different technical and cultural factors.

And then there's points 12 and 13:

And nothing, and I do mean nothing, pokes holes in the membrane better than blogs. You want pourous? You got pourous. Blogs punch holes in membranes like like it was Swiss cheese.
The more pourous your membrane ("x"), the easier it is for the internal conversation to inform the external conversation, and vice versa.

What applies to marketing products applies to corporate responsibility in companies: unless you align internal conversations with external conversations you won't be able to manage and exceed stakeholder expectations.

And if you don't know what they are, you are going to find managing corporate responsibility very difficult in future: you might be doing what you think is right, but if stakeholders are concerned about something else, you'll still be in trouble.

Link: gapingvoid: why corporate blogging works.

Just in case you missed it: here's why blogs matter

Type 'Nike reports' into Google and you get at no.4: altfunction. A small (but one would hope, almost perfectly formed) weblog with a certain focus. Someone visited altfunction through Google from that search yesterday. In fact, type 'corporate responsibility technology' in and at number no.1 you get altfunction.

Congratulations, you may be muttering: so what?

a) Nike's CSR report got a lot of coverage in the press recently. If someone wants a non-Nike opinion they might Google and find this site. When Google is probably the first port of call for the inexpert, that puts me in a minor, but nonetheless, not insignificant position. Just imagine what the other links are brought up by the search. Hey, don't imagine, take a look yourself.

Lesson one: on the web businesses have little control over what people are saying about them. And it's not just the big media organisations making the running. Small blogs can have an impact too.

b) There are many organisations working around the issues I discuss here. As are many people, well-known in their fields, but they don't show up quickly in Google.

Lesson two: blogs are the profile-builders of the 21st century. I wouldn't yet say that if you don't blog you don't exist (many a wit has coined blogito ergo sum), but you don't have the profile you could do where it matters more and more. Online: where, increasingly, the other stakeholders are.

Newspaper gets story leads and writers from blogging

Robert Andrews links to Journalism.co.uk and a summary of comments by the Guardian's Neil McIntosh about the impact of their blogs.

The exchange of views promoted by blogs is indeed a growing phenomenon. One story on the Guardian site during last November's US election triggered 800 comments. In addition, blogs often generate ideas for the editorial team, and the Guardian has recruited writers for the newspaper based on their accurate and well-written comments for the site's blogs.

There you have it: two clear examples of a blog feeding into the core business of a media company. If a company's assets are largely comprised of intangibles like its staff, then finding a ready source of writers and stories is going to be important for a newspaper.

But will this apply elsewhere? I can't see why not. Take a software developer - Shel Israel and Robert Scoble have been showing at The Red Couch how Microsoft is learning from blogs and their readers about how customers use their software.

Naturally, though, it will be businesses that interact regularly with customers through media (so the media, communications, technology and entertainment sectors) that most immediately could see scope. With podcasting taking off, who's to say radio won't be recruiting from the podcasters next?

Link: News sites must embrace blogs, says Guardian.

Blogs, trust and corporate responsibility

Shel Israel and Robert Scoble have posted a new chapter to the Red Couch, focusing on how trust in Microsoft is being built by the 1500 bloggers within the company forging a new corporate reputation quite different from the 'capitalism red in tooth and claw' epitomised by Messers Gates and Ballmer.

I'm encouraged that blogging is beginning to be seen as a tool in the trust armoury. I've written elsewhere in altfunction about how the 'regular and often' communication approach you see with blogging can build relationships with customers and other stakeholders in ways that the one off, often dreary annual CSR report cannot.

This is not to say that a blog will make you some kind of leader in CSR, a quick hit, a shortcut. It won't but it could effect a change in tone towards being more approachable, accountable and transparent. To work it needs performance. The problem is that many companies experiencing a trust discount are doing some great stuff on making their values matter, responding to social and environmental issues in their core products but are being let down in their communications. These are the people who should be exploring blogs and wikis; though not necessarily to run as 'CSR blogs'. Scoble advocates personal blogs as opposed to corporate blogs.

The blogs I like and trust are those associated with a person who you can get to know. In some cases, therefore, perhaps the CEO is the right person (I'd like to see Lord Browne blogging, or Arun Sarin, perhaps) in others it may be someone in marketing, or even those middle managers like Scoble.

It is less about who blogs, and more the fact that people can blog that matters. Just as corporate responsibility needs to be embraced throughout companies as core to business values if it is to reap the most potential, the attitude shift within business to reap the further benefit of blogging must be seen throughout a business.

Then hand in hand, the two can build trust.

Scoble's Corporate Blogging Manifesto: the CR angle

Self-proclaimed Microsoft Geek Blogger, Robert Scoble, posted his Corporate Weblog Manifesto a few years back. It still has much to commend it and was developed through painful experiences in the past. (NB Scoble's first chapter of his book on business blogging is here)

It's my view that blogs can be a powerful tool for companies looking to 'do' corporate responsibility well. Much of what Scoble has to say is of direct relevance, so I've annoted his list with my own comments below. Alternatively, the link to his original 2003 post is above.

Thinking of doing a weblog about your product or your company? Here's my ideas of things to consider before you start.

1) Tell the truth. The whole truth. Nothing but the truth. If your competitor has a product that's better than yours, link to it. You might as well. We'll find it anyway.

Alt: Blogging is an opportunity to develop and maintain relationships with stakeholders. Relationships are built on trust and without the truth you have no trust and hence no relationships. It's also critical that you seek to be transparent - show you have nothing to hide.

Free Arash and Mojtaba

Link: Committee to Protect Bloggers: THE COMMITTEE TO PROTECT BLOGGERS ANNOUNCES ITS FIRST CAMPAIGN: Free Arash and Mojtaba

Blogging CSR

As I thought more and more about setting up altfunction, I tried to find the decent blogs on CSR. I was staggered at how few there are. The good news is that Mark at the CSR in China gave an excellent summary of his favourites a few weeks back.

I regret not looking at CSR in China earlier - it's not that topic is not interesting and important, but it hasn't ever been a priority in the work I've been doing. The error in my ways is corrected and the blog is in my BlogLines*. In particular, I am glad Mark has put me on to Bill Zhang.

Bill is a student on the International Masters for Leadership in Sustainable Development run my my organisation, Forum for the Future, and Bill has been around these last few weeks, working in the floor upstairs from me. Did I know he had a blog? Ermmm, no.

But most fascinating it is. Another one for BlogLines. Shows how the internet shakes everything up: I am reading something from China that tells me about someone in the same building. Ho hum.

To finish this post, though I'd like to quote Mark on what makes a good blog:

I am convinced that blogs remain the best source of informed comment and learning. The websites of most institutions, universities and corporations just don't do it for me. Blogs are personal: they are full of flaws, contradictions, spelling mistakes and errors, but that's what makes it all so real. Contradictions and errors are what society is all about. None of us are perfect and we are learning all our lives, and blogs reveal insight, wisdowm, creativity and, most of all, passion.

*(What would be good, would be if Mark were to add Forum for the Future to his links under 'CSR refs: business'. After all, we work extensively with business on CSR and sustainable development. If he reads this, perhaps he will...)

Employee blogging

First there was the Waterstones blogger in the UK (asked to leave for thinly veiled candour online) and then there was Google's Mark Jen.

One obvious response from businesses will be to ask employees not to blog about work and add clauses to contracts to this effect. Of course many already have clauses to address confidentiality.

A more courageous approach is to engage with the blogging employees - it won't work in all cases, if the employee refuses to 'engage' of course it takes two to tango. The potential of an independent blog by an employee is clear:

It provides a window into what an employee thinks

It can become a lightning conductor for dissent and issues of concern that might not be raised through HR

It suggests a company treats its employees as adults - 'we trust you, are willing to take fair criticism and, in return, ask you to be fair too'

Ultimately, because it is unofficial a company can distance itself when necessary.

This is not to say there are equally significant risks and dangers, but when you get a reputation for having thin skin, unable to take criticism, you erode trust. Firing bloggers, who, if they are becoming an issue are by definition well connected and able to get rapid publicity, is unlikely to help.

Curiously, Jen is still 'powers Blogger', owned by guess who? Google.

Link: Curse of the blog strikes Google employee - silicon.com.

The trust discount

This feels like a PR-disaster in the making. McDonalds have been running a campaign around a tale of some small town American discovering a chip that 'looks' like Abraham Lincoln. There's even a blog. Thing is, according to Kevin Dugan's PRBlog: its all a fake.

I don't know how many people visit Dugan's blog - more than this one, I can confortably guess - but the real impact occurs when it hits an überblog like Gapingvoid with hundreds of thousands of hits a month and the influential likes of Jeff Jarvis and Tom Peters having a look: überblogger shall speak unto überblogger and the rest of us parasites feed off them.

As Malcolm Gladwell famously demonstrated in The Tipping Point: one link to a hub, and an idea spreads. Very fast. If the idea is 'McDonalds is faking', then the company loses trust. If the company then tries blogging again they have first to overcome the trust discount.

Blogs are an opportunity for openness and conversation: missing this opportunity is an own goal. Doh.