There are several challenges writing about your place of work and about your business on a blog. Not only are the postings available to the general public, but they are also available to your employees, your competition, your vendors and any one else that might be interested in hearing what’s going on.
Many of the things I deal with on a day to day basis involve personnel decisions, growth planning, vendor relationship issues, and many other topics that for one reason or another shouldn’t be discussed in a public forum. There is always a risk that something may slip through and hurt someone’s feelings, give the competition an idea of what your plans may be, let a vendor know something that may end up affecting prices in a negative way, etc.
I was reminded on Friday by a team member that the world is moving toward open collaboration and that these concerns are valid but not a reason to be silent, not just because you enjoy writing about business topics, but because your team, your industry and your own company will likely benefit from this type of open environment.
Open discussion clearly still has its limits and I’m sure we’ve all read the stories of staffers getting fired because of postings they’ve made, but those are outliers and are fairly easily avoided with a small amount of caution.
As always, it depends. Undoubtedly some things benefit from the wide distribution of information. After all “all of us are smarter than some of us”. Right? But, having the benefit of everyone’s input or even having the best plan isn’t always the most important consideration. Often, in this fast paced world, a delay can be costly and can spell failure. Sometimes a mediocre plan implemented “sooner” is better than a great plan implemented “later”. As an example, employees always want more information about what is going on and what the company’s plans are. Once they have more information they naturally will have questions and input. In the interest of good employee relations, a response must be generated to the employee feedback. All this takes time and often actually results in a change of plan. Maybe the plan is a better plan but certainly it’s a delayed plan. And sometimes it results in a plan that has been changed just to accommodate the perspective of the broader employee group. Sometimes, you can have “too many cooks in the kitchen”