CommLog

Still In The SlowLane?

I asked several days ago if GM would use its FastLane blog to address its restatement of earnings. Checking in today, there's nothing but positive PR spin: A post about GM's Red Tag event, a podcast of the Escalade preview, and a post by the VP of Environment and Energy about GM's "plans for bioethanol-based fuel systems and hybrids."

True, FastLane's "About" page states:

The FastLane blog is all about the cars and trucks. GM leaders discuss all aspects of our vehicles.

So, technically, I suppose a comment on earnings isn't in scope. But they've used the blog to talk strategic issues before, and you'd think the company would see that the medium they've chosen to use nearly requires some acknowledgment of such a significant corporate issue. Otherwise the silence itself becomes a message, one that also recasts the blog as flog, rather than an authentic way of conversing with the market.

SlowLane Blog?

This morning in the Wall Street Journal[1]  I read that GM is going to restate results for 2001, and possibly, subsequent years. I then clicked over to the FastLane blog to read GM's take on the issue and found ... nothing. Nothing yet, at least, and I'll be interested to see if Lutz or others offer an account on the site.

What's more, I notice there's not much at all happening at FastLane these days. There are only three posts on the front page, and only five over the past six weeks or so. (compared to eight in May and 11 in June).

When FastLane debuted most new media observers credited the site with being the "right" way for a big company to publish an external blog: posts by senior leaders, not highly spun by the PR group, and a mix of marketing flogs and candid takes on the company.

Now, though, I wonder if the site's losing its steam. We lose steam at CommLog from time to time, but we also don't widely promote CommLog as a portal into our firm. If anything it's a mix of hobby for us and service for clients, with any branding benefits a plus.

Is FastLane becoming SlowLane? We'll see, but the announcement of earnings restatement is exactly what a company using blogs in the "right" way would use a blog for: to offer an authentic, not-press-release take on the issue to supplement their other communication efforts.

We'll see if they do.

1. Subscription only; here's a link to Reuters' story.

Blogging @ McDonald's

Friend, colleague, and CRA client Steve Wilson of McDonald's is getting some well-deserved recognition for his efforts to bring blogging to the Golden Arches. (This ClickZNews piece is just the latest, and Steve's been hitting the conference trail pretty aggressively as well.)

Just over a year ago Steve asked that I speak to a collection of McDonald's leaders and content managers. The topic was the implications of new media (in this case blogs and wikis) hold for internal communication and leadership communication in companies of McDonald's complexity, and the progress his team has made since then is remarkable.

Steve blogs "outside the firewall" as well, and there's a nice bio of Steve here.

The CIO Who Admitted Too Much?

CIO Insight is currently highlighting what it describes as the story of "The CIO Who Admitted Too Much."

[T]he CIO of Overstock.com recently sent off a note to key business partners taking the heat for a wide range of technologies that weren't working out. "I'll start by saying that the vast majority of system problems we have are problems related to updates," [CIO Shawn] Schwegman wrote. "These update problems have been manifesting themselves as inventory update failures, missing orders, missing images, incorrect status synchs, etc." "At the end of the day, all of these problems boil down to Overstock's failure (read, my failure) to architect a system that can handle real-time updates properly," Schwegman wrote. "I cannot apologize enough for both the number of problems you all have had to deal with and for the length of time you've been plagued with these problems. I consider this one of my greatest failures over the last two years and I am terribly sorry."

The article's title, which asserts that the CIO admitted too much, misses the mark. Stepping up to take responsibility for what his business partners were ultimately going to blame him anyway is hardly the worst of his sins. Schwegman did two things wrong. First, when the memo leaked, his lame spin--that "the memo was simplified because he was writing 'to a bunch of non-technical people,' and that simplifications may have been misleading."--exacerbated his problems. Second, after offering his mea culpa, he failed to speak with certainty about the next steps needed to begin solving the problems.

PR & New Media

There's an interesting conversation about PR and new media going on in the blogosphere right now. First read this by David Weinberger (one of the Cluetrain authors). Among his points:

Now I think PR is entering a phase where it sees itself as helping companies with their public relationships. ("Public Relationships — Adding hips to public relations"?) I first heard this term at EdelmanPR (disclosure: to whom I'm a consultant), but I don't know who coined it. I find the phrase useful because it asserts a connection to traditional PR while pointing to a new dominant possibility. It implies, in line with Tim's thinking, that PR needs to get out of the intermediation business. It means that more voices have to be allowed to speak from within the corporation, since relationships based on a committee-produced controlled voice will fail. It explains why blogs are such a useful tool: They are public relationships. It assumes there's persistence to the relationship, not merely press releases thrown in our faces whenever the company has some new crap to flog. It assumes mutuality. It relies on the relationships being based on frankness and transparency.

I heard him make this point at the PR Seminar, and at the time it seemed to strike many of the PR folks there as an insight. David's post (and you should go read the whole thing) was prompted by this post on "The New Public Relations" by Tim Bray, which also prompted a critical post from Chris Edwards. Follow those links, too. The points about PR are worth reading, and they illustrate how blogs are conversations as well.

Intranet Blogs

We've long advocated for the use of blogs as internal communication tools ... executive "from the desk of" blogs, project blogs, department blogs, there are many ways organizations can benefit from using the medium. A recent column in Darwin managzine outlines some tips so "to ensure that your blog is read instead of inspiring facetious, cheeky t-shirts." Their tips:

* Keep it conversational and light * Know your audience and write to them * Blogs are highly time-sensitive so currency is critical * Anecdotes are encouraged and expected * Use links to refer to relevant information * Be succinct and break-up the text - which encourages "scanning"

You can find the entire article here...

More For The "What Not To Do" File

Also of note at Fast Company Now is this FC blog entry about an email CNBC sent to staffers earlier this week announcing the cancellation of Dennis Miller’s show (be sure to read the deconstruction ... it’s funny, sad, and spot-on). This entry is eerily reminiscent of examples we use in our consulting practice (our favorite: this memo at InternalMemos.com. The problem here is medium, not message, and as we’ve written before, it’s a function of media richness. CNBC made a classic mistake: pushing a rich message through a lean channel. When that happens the message is always misconstrued ... in this instance, as being relationally insensitive, and surely for some, cowardly. (CNBC also made another mistake: waiting until the fifth sentence to deliver the bad news. If you have a hammer to drop, drop it right away. It makes you look candid rather than cowardly. “Folks, I’m writing to tell you some bad news: This Friday’s Dennis Miller Show will be the last. Now let me explain why.” ... that’s the way.) CNBC’s missive reflects the rub of extremely cost-efficient channels like email. They’re fast, easy, and most of all, inexpensive. But unless the content is lean, they’re also a primary cause for misunderstanding at best, and for damaged leadership credibility at worst. At least they didn’t text "U R Fired :-(" ...

Sites That Should Be Blogs, But Aren't

The title should continue: "... and that suffer as a result." Today's case study: TransformingUSAirways.com. What better way to reassure the flying public and shareholders than through the first-person, personal, and timely voice of a weblog? Instead, USAirways conveys information about its bankruptcy and transformation with all the confidence and personalization of ... well ... a bankruptcy filing. Here's what greets you on the home page:

On September 12, 2004, US Airways Group announced that the Company and certain of its subsidiaries filed voluntary petitions for reorganization under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. The action is intended to provide the airline the opportunity to implement its Transformation Plan built on lower costs, a simplified fare structure, and expanded service in the eastern U.S., Europe, the Caribbean and Latin America. The case will be heard in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in Alexandria, Virginia.

One hopes they're not also relying on this site to convey information about their transformation to the employee population ...

Touting Forced Workaholism

Another interesting piece in the current issue of Fortune describes three current ad campaigns from Bear Stearns, Morgan Stanley, and RE/MAX that "boast about basically ruining employees' lives for the benefit of the customer."

"It kind of surprises me that they're doing this," says Maynard Brusman, a workplace psychologist based in San Francisco. "So much in the workplace now is about emotional intelligence and understanding the needs of employees. This to me sounds clueless."

The Evolution of the Intranet

Intranet Trends to Watch For: Cultures and priorities vary, but there are some common issues for organizations as intranets continue to evolve. From Line56. Shiv Singh hypothesizes about what's next for the land of corporate intranets:

The trends identified below based on experiences with several large organizations will give you a hint of what's coming and how to prepare for the next wave in your intranet's evolution. Be careful, some of these trends may already be moving across your organization. Make sure that you're ready for them.

Singh's predictions include the following (for more detail about each, please see the full article): # Intranets return to the domain of the departments # The records management and the legal departments get involved # All employees become intranet publishers # The corporate telephone directory loses its luster # The new killer app -- the knowledge management tool # Real time information delivery becomes a priority # Information retrieval remains unsolved but there's hope # Employees demand a more aesthetic user experience Based on recent conversations with clients, especially those who will implement Share Point in the coming months, these are right on. The only thing we'd add is that more and more of our clients are using their Intranet site to communicate what's important to the organization by focusing it around their strategy. Ask yourself: How is our Intranet site supporting our organizations strategic communication objectives? Or even: What is our current site communicating that is in direct opposition to these objectives? The answers to both questions may include key metrics highlighted, reward and recognition systems, and even layout and headings.