Blogs at work

judith meskill's knowledge notes: weblogs & km in the news...

Guardian Unlimited :: Why blogs could be bad for business
In this Guardian article Neil McIntosh points out that while companies might not be rushing out to embrace weblogging as a corporate interface to their customers that they would be well advised to utilize weblogging as an internal tool for Knowledge Management.

The bit I found interesting about the article talked about internal blogging and the ever-present issue of "knowledge (or information) is power." No organization is going to succeed with blogging (or any other sharing tool) if the culture does not support it.

... but there remains one flaw that no fancy programming or sensible consideration of purpose can overcome, a flaw that remains a challenge for any business blog booster.

While blogging's earliest advocates operate on the "information wants to be free" principle, many businesses would shudder at the very thought.

"Information is power" is a more likely mantra in many organisations. Whenever you hear those three words, you're hearing the signal of the kind of closed information culture where there's also a heads-down, bunker mentality utterly unsuited to the openness required for a convincing weblog, be it an external PR effort, or knowledge-sharing internal one.