The gratuitous public display of corporate self-flagellation is the latest palaver to hail from the stage of political correctness. The sultans of political correctness are advocating that companies expend their resources to set up blogs for the purpose of enabling dissatisfied employees, customers and corporate gadflies to voice their dissatisfaction with the company, its products and its policies. Providing these “constituents” a venue to express their feelings about a company is supposed to yield greater insight into the thinking of the company’s customers. Allowing employees to disseminate their dissatisfaction through corporate blogs is supposed to usher in greater corporate transparency.
I believe that such line of reasoning is an overwhelmingly myopic, shallow, and detrimental strategy. I recommend that corporate executives consider the following:
- Blogs are analogous to outdoor billboards. If someone were to vandalize a billboard with graffiti, any responsible company would have such graffiti removed. Instead, the dictates of political correctness encourage the submission of increasingly greater amounts of derogatory posts and the lionizing of those who contribute such posts.
- The reputation and perception of a company within its community are intangible assets. Just as corporate executives have a fiduciary responsibility to maximize the profits and value of the tangible assets of the companies that they manage, they have a fiduciary duty to enhance the intangible assets under their control. Actively facilitating the diminution of intangible assets which fall under an executive’s guardianship is irresponsible at best.
- Executives already know a good bit about their business and products. Every successful executive should know what the product’s weaknesses are and what the sources of customer dissatisfaction are. There are other ways of learning about these issues such as surveys, emails, and phone calls. Letting customers and employees air the company’s dirty laundry in public is no excuse for ill-informed management or for faulty information capture practices.
- Blogs absolutely do NOT facilitate dialogue. Comments on others' posts are typically far beyond the pale of what would pass for reaonably acceptable discourse. Maybe it is partly due to the cold appearance of words on computer screens, but comments on others' posts are typically ad hominem, spiteful and meant to be hurtful. Back and forth postings on blogs too often turns into a volley of juvenile name calling, smears and slights.
- Allowing employees to gripe on corporate sponsored blogs is supposed to facilitate transparency. This rationale blindfolds a cross-eyed and confused face. Instead of generating transparency it presents a warped and jaundiced picture of the company. Those who complain most often and loudest are not representative of the workforce and surely cannot be relied upon to present a balanced or comprehensive view of the treatment of the employee base. Encouraging employees to gripe risks lowering the morale of the entire workforce.
- Corporate-sponsored blogs do not provide a platform for the entire employee base to share their voices. In many cases, managers are reluctant to respond to accusations for fear of inflaming relatively minor sources of disenchantment. Their decision not to respond could often be taken as a sign of indifference. I do not believe that managers should feel compelled—or be criticized for failing--to address every sniveling whimper.
- Let’s not forget that at least some companies are not ensnared in this hallucinatory web of politically correct bullshit. Some companies are still focused on making a profit at the expense of their competitors. These companies could be your competitors. They take information gathering seriously and will press every advantage they can against their competitors to the fullest extent possible. Caterpillar’s Japanese competitors do not expect to find revelations in the daily air-mail delivery of the Peoria (IL) Journal Star they receive, but they scour every line of the newspaper to take advantage of any information they can glean about Caterpillar from its hometown newspaper. Caterpillar should not expend its resources to develop and maintain a venue to make its competitors’ information gathering easier. Neither should your company.
- It is unfortunate but true that the rule of economics is supplanting the rule of law in commerce today. Buyers that detect vulnerability on the part of their suppliers will press for contract renegotiations. Buyers conduct cost analysis on their suppliers and seek to beat down prices they pay to an area that approaches their suppliers’ marginal costs. Providing too much information about the internal operations of your company confers your adversaries with advantages in negotiations.
Corporations should unapologetically act as confident entities with defined missions, not as sniveling insecure amebas reduced to reflexively genuflect at every whim and vacuous regurgitated buzzword. Corporate blogs should be used to further the corporation’s mission, not as an electronic Speakers’ Corner for those with agendas anathema to the interests of the corporation or for those whose postings cast the company in an uncomplimentary light.
Issues related to transparency and negotiations will be addressed at our Mergers and Acquisitions Due Diligence Conference in San Francisco on April 17-18, 2007. Contact Neomi Barazani for more information. Issues related to blogging, marketing and reputation management will be addressed at our next Viral Marketing Conference.
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