The Canute Business Blogging Barometer
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So, many corporations are trying to figure out what they should do about this blogging phenomenon. It struck me that there should be a handy scale so that corporations could assess how well they’re doing. Seeing the gyrations of some corporations, it struck me that King Canute might be a suitable symbol of attitude on blogging. Of course King Canute got a bum rap since he was trying to prove to his courtiers that he could not stop the tide coming in. Nevertheless he is often seen as a symbol of those who want to stop inevitable progress. So with all due apologies to him, the scale is measured in canutes. We’ll illustrate the scale with a few benchmarks
The top of of the scale is 5 canutes.
Here you’ll find the corporation that wishes to exert very tight control of all outgoing communications and everything goes first past the legal department then on to the CEO. Blogging is forbidden. There are many examples of this: you can think of your favourite one.
Just below this is 4 canutes.
Here you’ll find the corporation that would like to exert very tight control of all outgoing communications and have everything go first past the legal department then on to the CEO. However they realize this is becoming less politically correct. So blogging is tolerated within very strict guidelines. Again you can think of many examples.
The 2 canutes point on the scale is where it begins to get interesting. You’ll find many corporations sitting at this point.
Such corporations give a great deal of latitude to individuals but a clear blogging policy exists and some disciplinary action may result for any breach or for what may be deemed to be negative comments. Some of the most surprising companies are at this point. For example check this comment seen at Threadwatch.org and attributed to someone within Google. “Google doesn’t get Blogging? So says Google Engineer…”
Of course 0 canutes point is the ideal. Here the corporation relies on the good sense of its employees and knows that a strong team spirit within the corporation will result in largely appropriate blogging.
It’s an interesting exercise to try to award canutes to your favourite big corporation. So what would you give Microsoft, Intel or Apple?
Tags: business, blogging, control, power.
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BPWrap
July 6th, 2006 at 6:36 pm
[...] The oh-so-new Canute Business Blogging Barometer is hereby withdrawn, since it clearly has been overtaken by events. When the prestigious Harvard Business Review is naming Blogging as the #10 Breakthrough Idea for 2005, no one will want to get left behind as the bandwagon rolls forward. Well yes, but … [...]
July 6th, 2006 at 6:38 pm
[...] Perhaps that’s why BPWrap has done so well recently in the Carnival of the Capitalists. This travelling road show should be on your Newsfeed list. By my count it’s now been running weekly for 73 weeks and every week you can open your eyes to 40 or so new selected blog possibilities. It’s called a weekly sampler of economics and business blogging from around the web. BPWrap has been selected 5 times in the last 5 weeks. This week we’re the first quoted blog so we must be doing something right. That’s for the entry last week on the Canute Business Blogging Barometer. [...]