Mandatory employee blogs: one way to boost knowledge

I have a piece of advice for those who bemoan the lack of knowledge-sharing in their organizations: Make tacit knowledge explicit. Externalize expertise and experiences across all functions, from the office manager to the executive team.

How? Make it mandatory for every employee to keep an internal blog and post at least once per week. Depending on their role, employees can blog about customer experiences, sales tactics, strategy, product improvements, organizational design, competitors, market trends, and even gossip. Potential productivity losses are outweighed by the value of knowledge that is being generated and shared.

And what is productivity anyway these days? "Productivity (...) is exactly the wrong thing to care about in the new economy," writes Kevin Kelly in his Maxims for the Network Economy: "In the coming era, doing the exactly right next thing is far more fruitful than doing the same thing twice."

Blogging helps identify the right thing. If you turn your organization into a writing organization, it will become readable and thus more knowledgeable.

[benjaminstraight]

Good article.

[sdandrew75]

Really? Make posting in a blog mandatory? Make tacit knowledge explicit? Do the right thing instead of the same thing twice? Wow, this is regurgitation of the knowledge management hype from 4-6 years ago. KM is extremely useful, but was watered down with buzzwords and broad statements like the ones above by consultants who had never actually managed anything real, much less knowledge. I can't believe you wasted time with this article.
- Every manager know's, mandatory equals guaranteed failure!

[deichmans]

Partially agree. A ?blog is more ?broadcast? than ?dialog?, so unless the requirement also applies to reading (and responding to) comments, it is still less preferable than the water cooler.

That said, ?Twitter? and other IM-related chat tools give temporal and cognitive (if not spatial) connections, and in our schools have allowed the ?clique communiques? to move beyond just the lunch room or hallways into the classrooms and homes.

[lafloer]

Tim, this is an interesting idea. Are there any case studies and/or examples where this has shown that this can work ?

Also, one could argue about 'forced creativity'. But definitely a rattle&shake it approach !

SL

[plambe]

Dr David Vaine of Apparently KM PLC has been implementing this technique very successfully for some time in what he calls their corporate flogging (=forced blogging) programme. He has a very good podcast on the technique at
http://www.greenchameleon.com/gc/blog_detail/david_vaine_on_corporate_blogging/

[shanedr]

Really? What about those who are less than eloquent with words? I can't think of a faster career killer then to post a disjointed, confusing description of the problems and solutions of the past day or week.

[aaronjohnseldon]

Excellent article! I couldn't agree more. In my current workplace, I am also trying to push blogging into the norm. I couldn't agree more that in today's world the communication/coordination can often times be far more important than what we consider raw "productivity". After you have have seen so much time wasted by overlapping efforts and knowledge hidden in silos, you start to realize that blogging is really a very good investment for the enterprise.

[RichardHare]

I have seen the effect of enforced blogging. We have an internal blogging system of which I am one of the most ardent advocates.

Several people who have attended specific development courses have set up alumni blogs and agreed to complete three posts every quarter to chart their subsequent progress.

Some people blog about what they have done during each quarter. At the end of each quarter, there is a rush of members who quickly submit three blogs of little or no value in order to fulfil their obligation.

Forced blogging - I understand it's known as "flogging" - results in box-ticking compliance.