Are businesses figuring out yet how to manage information with blogs and RSS? "By Invitation Only" (CIO Magazine, Sept 1, 2006) gives us a peek at a few companies that are (IMHO) fooling around with it as an alternative to email and intranets. I'm betting that this is just the tip of the iceberg. It's tough to see what's happening on corporate intranets, where business blogs may be privately proliferating.

I found Mike Gotta's quote surprising in its lack of vision,

"We don't really know how we can use RSS for work purposes," says Mike Gotta, principal analyst at the research firm Burton Group. While pioneering CIOs are already exploring some possibilities, they're all guessing at this stage, he notes."

While CIOs may be just waking up to the potential power of RSS, Mike Gotta has been enlightening us on collaboration technologies long enough to see multiple uses in the enterprise. I have to assume that in this case, the reporter's translation was off base.

The problem is not a lack of vision (what could be in the future) nor a lack of application (what we can do now), but a lack of adoption. Busy CIOs are at the awareness stage, but  given the compelling need for relief from information overload in today's knowledge-driven businesses, expect them to move quickly along the adoption curve.

One approach is to start simply with RSS-driven status reporting. This application shifts an already mandated task to a technology that is more easily consumed, requiring minimal behavior changes and a straightforward measure of success. Rob Boothby has a great post on this topic, and suggests an even easier behavior change: use email and cc: the project blog. 

A manager would subscribe to the RSS feeds of each of his direct reports. The team lead for a short-term project would subscribe to categorized feeds of team members that pertain only to that project. An individual contributor might subscribe to his or her manager, coworkers, peers, and mentors in diverse parts of the company.

Management may attempt to control the flow of information so they can put their own spin on things, requesting group-based security to limit who can view their team's reports. Resist this request as much as possible, although compromise may be necessary for initial buy-in. In the long run, staff will adjust to the increased visibility of their reports, and an open communication channel will allow cross-fertilization of ideas throughout the company.

Beyond the internal usefulness, businesses that encourage intranet blogging can begin to mine the native talent looking for candidate external bloggers. The value proposition of carefully selected public bloggers is becoming more obvious as marketing objectives move beyond awareness towards engagement and relationship building activities.

What is your business doing with intranet-based blogs? What do you *wish* they were doing? Send me an email at collaborblabber@maximumspring.com

11:04:19 AM    
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