Internal blogging: What next?

...an intranet is basically a dumping ground for a lot of information, where you collect a lot of stuff, that is basically inaccessible for people because it is hard to find...

Does that sound familiar? This sentence is from a presentation by FXPal (found via Google Video). The occasion was the March 22 Google Tech Talk, the bottom line of which Anders Byland describes in his posting "Google Techtalks for the chronically curious":

(Google) seems proud of its "campus-like" atmosphere, and I can see how providing onsite events like these can help them recruit some intellectually curious chronic academics and other mega-geeks of various kinds.

So it is basically a marketplace for innovative ideas, walking intellectual capital for Google to pick from. If you are interested in capturing know-how from presentations and meetings (seemingly without a lot of effort), see the video.

Unlike the people from FXPal my current desires are far more modest: What else can be achieved with an internal blog? Can it solve the problem of the intranet as a dumping ground? Or is it just another dumping ground for useless information? I think it can help with some very basic issues:

1. An internal blog brings people with common interests together. A good outcome that has potential risks to it: what happens if those people dont get along well?

2. It can help you find out whether you are doing the same work like the guy across the corridor. This might result in increasing innovation, better quality of work, higher reuse and less duplication in effort, time and money. Alternatively it can lead to increased competition, which is not necessarily bad but potentially ends up being personal.

3. I like the idea of presentations on the intranet, or in this case blogs. How about people linking their presentations to their posting? I am not talking about those "I attended a conference and found this powerpoint presentation" type of presentations. I am thinking of all relevant presentations one gives or comsumes. The FXPal solution from the video is of course way more sophisticated than attaching a presentation to your posting, it is OCR, smart cards, recognising and cutting unnescessary parts and of course full text search. But that is a different planet still thinking about the last ten intranets I have seen.

4. Social tagging for entries should be a standard in a time, where del.icio.us or flickr are not exactly startups anymore. When applied properly, social tagging can have plenty of benefits. But it needs time and critical mass. BTW, see some intersting social software products from British company Headshift here.

5. Internal blogs can end the email flood and endless discussions via email distribution lists or people in cc: who are there mostly for inexplicable reasons. Or how about the idea, that blogs stop email in transactions entirely?

6. Internal blogs can make the training phase of a person and retention of knowledge much easier and more accessible. It can help new people adapting to house style, seeing how work is done and what quality is expected. A blog from a finished transaction is basically what a post transaction review should be but never will be.

7. Internal blogs offer a lot of comfort zones for those having doubts about the concept. Different roles with diverse viewing or editing rights, "trial groups" consisting of your trustees only, constant evaluation and someone making sure there are no inappropriate postings can ensure gradual change in the direction you wish for.

So far, the concept of internal blogging, provided it satisfies basic usability needs and reaches critical mass, might be a solution for a multitude of problems that can become personally annoying and costly for the entire organisation...

A whole new world of CSR metrics...

There is but one "social responsibility" for corporate executives, Friedman believes: they must make as much money as possible for their shareholders. This is a moral imperative... There is, however, one instance when corporate social responsibility can be tolerated, according to Friedman - when it is insincere... Hypocrisy is virtuous when it serves the bottom line. Moral virtue is immoral when it does not.

This is a quote from the book "The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Power" by Joel Bakan, from an interview with Milton Friedman. This quote brings the trouble with corporate social responsibility (CSR) to the point: Where CSR is honest, it is immoral against shareholders and when CSR is only for the sake of marketing or looking good it is immoral anyways. Nevertheless I am sure a lot of CSR efforts have a positive impact on the social or environmental surroundings of companies, but as with many things the question is how to measure it. Natural Logic advertises a tool aiming to provide ROI for CSR, giving some basic directions where it could go in terms of indirect benefits:

Indirect benefits include improving financial performance (leaner cost structure, gains in market share and penetration, improved customer loyalty & employee morale, increasing shareholder value, gaining brand momentum as CSR leader); improving tools and capabilities (innovation in product & business development, better feedback for better operating efficiency, improved strategic thinking & managerial confidence); while improving environmental performance (reduced footprint, regulatory “insulation”)

Granted, I ll easily buy the employee morale point and the brand momentum as well as the footprint by extension, but it will be difficult to measure the real ROI. I dont believe a lot of organisations can put a value tag on e.g. 1% rise in employee morale, provided they measure it in the first place (see the Rucci at Sears classic for more on that).

As for employee morale: Everytime I was allowed to do pro bono over the last years, I was a happier employee afterwards, even though I still remember the sad eyes of the poor kids we took the museum when they unpacked their lunches while for us our law firm catering consisting of everything they had never seen before arrived. Also not to forget the week we flew to Poland to build houses, which was fun, but came with a travel expense price tag that would have allowed them to build an entire village themselves with proper workers knowing their job. Sure, taking part in your firm's CSR efforts is fun, but the general approach made me sad every time.

Also read Jai's posting on the Starbucks example, which is a good example for gaining brand momentum through CSR. Even though I never go to Starbucks (after all I live in Vienna where we still have proper "Kaffeehäuser") they managed to get the message through to me as a non customer that they are all about fair trade coffee, distracting from the fact that they dont pay proper wages and create more waste a day than all the other coffeehouses in Vienna together.

As for the moral value of CSR, I think one sentence says it all: "Actions are But By Intentions", I wish organisations would be rewarded for the real intentions behind actions and not for "doing" CSR out of needing something positive on their annual reports...