Why CEOs Shouldn't Blog

The blogoplex is reacting to the Business Week blog post entitled: "The Business Blog Backlash is Nigh."  In it, Stephen Baker says, "It's the rare CEO who has the time and energy and openness to blog."  He cites our boy Bob Lutz's decreasing blogging frequency as evidence.

Baker's correct.  And incomplete.

Back in graduate school, my mentor, Antos Rancurello, taught me many valuable lessons.  One in particular was as follows: in order to be successful at anything, one must possess three elements: Time, Interest and Talent.  Lacking any of these in a degree appropriate to succeeding at the particular task, one will fail.  Essentially still being fixated at an adolescent level of development at the time, I came to call this the T.I.T. Principle.

Let's apply the T.I.T. Principle to CEO blogging.

Time - Ask any blogger how much time it takes to blog on a regular basis and you'll almost undoubtedly hear, "a lot!"  (Scientific bunch, these bloggers!)  Fact is, if you write three or more 200-500 word posts per week on topics other than the current content of your consciousness, you'll spend anywhere from 2-5 hours writing.  Jazz up your posts with images, graphics, links to other posts and the like, and you'll jack that time up quickly.  And, that's just writing posts.  Add to that replying to comments, wading through RSS feeds, reading other blogs, and so on, and you're up to ten or more hours per week.  Too much time for the typical CEO to spend on blogging.

Interest - Spending that much time per week on anything requires sustained motivation.  I'm interested in blogging as a social phenomenon and as a business development tool.  I'm a psychologist, so, hearing people's voices (and expressively using my own) is of interest to me, regardless of the medium.  Most CEOs aren't.  Blogging as a valuable business development tool is still an open question for most CEOs, lacking the hard "evidence" most need to justify the significant time investment.  So, CEOs are not likely to be all that interested in blogging.

Talent - Like any expressive medium, blogging has its own melody, timbre and rhythm.  There are many kinds of blogs, but the ones I find most engaging are a mixture of seriousness and irreverence.  I like to hear ideas batted around creatively, with clarity and wit.  The blogger's "conversational voice" is critical to the blog's success.  While some CEOs may have a knack for this kind of expression (and I think Lutz, while not a CEO, is a senior executive whose style fits the medium very well), most don't.  The "corporate speak"...circumspect, foggy, obscure, guarded...that most CEOs are forced to use (or believe they are) is antithetical to the tone that makes blogs refreshing.

So, it's not surprising that we see so few successful examples of CEO blogging.  Because most CEOs are likely to lack the Time, Interest and/or Talent necessary to be successful bloggers, I'd say most CEOs shouldn't blog.

But then again, most CEOs shouldn't do most of the things that are necessary for their businesses to be successful.

Tags: CEO Blogs Blogging

Comments

[Michael Wagner]

I asked Ralf Beuker (www.design-management.de) what it is like to blog. He said "a blog is like a bird which opens its beak as soon as it sees you". It was a great cautionary image that has me thinking - am I ready and able to feed it? To that I add this wonderful post - blogging is great but "get real with yourself and count the cost" would seem to be the wisdom emerging.

Does anyone know what the mortality rate is for blogs? I mean those that are started and abandoned? Or perhaps there is a better measure. Just wondering out loud.

[Tom]

The baby bird image is a terrific one, Michael. Like that bird, the blog is always there and always hungry. Your question about the mortality rate is a very good indicator of the difficulty of feeding that baby every day. I'm sure many, many bloggers give up after the first few months, after the "thrill" is gone.

Thanks, as always, for stopping by and commenting.

[Aldon Hynes]

Let me present a slightly different perspective on this. I am blogmaster for the DeStefano for CT blog. I view political blogs as being somewhat related to CEO blogs.

A good CEO, like a good political candidate, really shouldn't have the time to blog regularly. However, if they can manage to have other people keep a blogging community going, and only blog when they manage to make the free time, even if it is only once a month or once a quarter, the blog entries can be very powerful.

So, with proper planning, the need for time can be somewhat mitigated. Obvisously, the interest and the talent need to be there, but I would hope that any good CEO, or political candidate, would have sufficient interest in their endevors to want to blog and would have the talent to communicate effectively. (They can always be coached on the latter)

[Tom]

Yes, Aldon, I agree with everything you say. CEOs making occasional appearances on a well-conceived corporate blog is an excellent way to augment day-to-day blogging. As for the interest and talent, as you say, coaching can do wonders. Most CEOs can communicate in various media, but, as you know, the "blogging voice" can be tricky for people to master.

Thanks for the comment.

[brandon]

tit lol

[Steven Silvers]

These are good points, but I'll offer another reason why most -- I said most -- CEO's shouldn't blog, especially those who are chief executive of a public company.

CEOs are the personfication of the companies they run and the stakeholders interests which that company exists to benefit. This is true whether they speak in the employee lunchroom, at a trade show, milling around at a chamber cocktail party or through a blog. If a CEO blogs as a representative of his company -- which won't happen unless it was anonymous -- then everything written is commercial speech, open to interpretation and reaction by investors, unhappy employees, class-action lawyers, competitors and other camp-followers with an agenda.

A good CEO blog would eventually create expectations and demand that the CEO author tell it like it is on relevant stakeholder issues -- the movement of the stock, analyst ratings, upcoming product launches, lawsuits, competitors moves, trends in the market, rumors and gossip. Any good CEO would of course not throw open the windows to let the world participate in the day-to-day goings on inside the sausage factory. They wouldn't do it in a daily email update or full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal, and they certainly wouldn't do it in an open-ended web journal.

As such, the CEO blog by design eventually goes away or becomes another interactive marketing tool.

In the post-Enron, Sarbanes-Oxley environment of tell-all-or-else corporate governance, we should not expect the rank-and-file CEO crowd to themselves create more transperancy than what they already struggle to comply with.

Steve
www.stevensilvers.com
Scatterbox - Field notes on corporate affairs, reputation management and integrated communications

[Tom]

Thanks for your thoughts, Steve. Certainly, CEOs are constrained by Sarbox. Jonathan Schwartz of Sun is the obvious example of one who manages to blog within those constraints. He also has the time (believes the investment of time is worthwhile), interest (believes the dialogue with the markeplace is valuable) and talent (writes in a voice that resembles that of a true resident of Earth) to do so.

[Steven Silvers]

I agree that Jonathan Schwartz does a very good job. But let me play devil’s advocate for a second.

Mr. Schwartz is not the chief executive officer. He is President and COO, and his blog is primarily operationally and marketing focused, with abundant company cheerleading as you’d expect. It is very well written and has a lot of personality. There is little written on corporate governance matters that would cause concern.

There is one post, however, from September 16, where he asks Sun employees to keep company information confidential. He writes: “There have been a few instances in recent weeks where crucial data and photos were leaked..”

A journalist, shareholder or other stakeholder might follow-up: What “crucial data” was leaked? How was it leaked? Did it impact the launch or other operations in any way? Was the information material? Did the company disclose it upon knowing the leak? Was there an internal investigation? What did the investigation discover? Was action taken? Is this a recurring problem? What has the company done to ensure this doesn’t happen again? Is the company confident that it can ensure the security of all "crucial data"? To what degree? Why wasn’t this announced? Will it be disclosed in the next public filing? Was there a cost associated with the leak, the investigation and any action taken? Will this be reported?

My point is this: The time will come, as blogs become more established, readership becomes more intense and search engines more finely tuned, that a statement like this will light a fire that the articulate, well-meaning author did not mean to ignite.

[Tom]

Yes, Schwartz's role is President/COO, but he certainly needs to be careful of Sarbox restrictions.

I think your questions make the point that blogging is not without risk. That is the point that risk managers always make: there's risk. In the case of blogging, there's also benefit. Look at the kind of material Scoble exposes on Channel 9. I'm sure a tight interpretation of some law would make the product disclosures made there "risky." And, the feedback Microsoft's product developers receive is a benefit (not to mention the marketing benefits to the company.) Ballmer must have done the equation and determined the risks of not permitting blogging (and establishing a clear company policy about it, demonstrating his attention to his fiduciary duties) were greater than the risks of permitting it.

We're entering into a new era of "corporate" communication, one in which (for better or worse) the voice of MiniMicrosoft is as much a part of the larger conversation as Ballmer's.