Management, branding, and the high price of fear
Submitted by doc on Sun, 07/02/2006 - 00:19.
Here's Tom at TrueTalk:
Blogs tap into managers' fears of losing control, not of "the message" but of their workers. "Managing" is still synonymous with "keeping them in line." How could we manage without controlling the workers? Without making sure they're not saying what we want them to say, or else, making sure they say nothing at all?
And how else could we manage if not through fear?
I think there are lots of other ways to manage. But doing that thinking somehow brings Peter Drucker to mind:
Suppliers and especially manufacturers have market power because they have information about a product or a service that the customer does not and cannot have, and does not need if he can trust the brand. This explains the profitability of brands.
Blogging at, or for, or with (choose your preposition) a company means opening it up. It means, for the brand-obsessed, the threat of sharing secrets.
The problem is, most of the knowledge that matters now, for many companies, lies outside the company itself. Yes, there are still secrets worth keeping (new product plans, for innovative manufacturers, would be chief among them). But, as more and more know-how is applied to common infrastructure that might be uncommonly leveraged, the advantage increasingly goes to companies that can mine uncommon ideas and wisdom from the increasingly large percentage of "knowledge workers" located outside the walls of what Dr. Weinberger calls Fort Business.
How do you tap that?
By getting those knowledge workers involved. Getting them to participate. And by getting the company to participate in projects where those knowledge workers are already active. In many, if not most, cases these will be open source projects.
Blogs are not necessarily central to this kind of work and relationship-building. But they provide an important supportive role in the opposite-of-fear-o-sphere required for participation to happen.
Several years ago, Apple made a big deal about adopting and embracing open source. And it has contributed to a number of open source projects. But the company has a near-absolute branding culture, and — we learned at Bloggercon last week — forbids blogging, at least by fear if not by outright policy.
This will hurt the company in the long run, and perhaps even in the short.
When you see defection to Linux by high-profile Mac users like Mark Pilgrim and outright Mac fanatics like Cory Doctorow, you're seeing some very large canaries dying in the coal mine of a brand that's been looking in its own mirror for far too long — and isn't listening to its own best brains, simply because those brains don't work inside the fort.
Another Apple blogger?
I thought this guy is an Apple blogger, too?
sometimes leaving is the best option
I've worked for a lot of managers, and when they are truly crap and don't want to change, it is time to smile and leave. Don't try to change the behaviour if it is not going to change, treat them as a possible referee. I've seen too many good people go down trying to save managers from themselves.
Same with a company, or software (like macs), or anything in life, spend time on the positive stuff if you can (although you have to address some bad stuff sometimes) for your own mental health.
banned
Did anyone tell Chuq von Rospach that Apple bans blogging? Maybe they have a corporate culture that doesn't promote it (I work for a company like that, and pretty much don't write about work at all on my blog), but banning? I'm skeptical....
Apple's Safe
I don't think Mark or Cory will have much affect on Apple, they're an anomaly, not a trend. Most just want to get stuff done on a good machine and don't have the time to deal with it the hassles. I also don't think Apple has to blog or allow it and it won't hurt them one bit. Business blogging and transparency is overrated for companies like Apple.
It's all about enforcing social norms.
Hi, Doc:
I think what you're talking about may be true in a general sense. One of the things that used to be true in our society is that people higher on the totem pole had a bigger public presence and louder public voice than those below. It was one of the privileges (sp?) of rank.
When someone lower on the totem pole gets louder than the people immediately above them, the fear talk (aren't you afraid you'll get fired/not get hired at XYZ in the future?), intimidation (blog and we'll fire you) and retaliation (you're fired) -- begins, as a way to enforce social norms.
I dislike all of these, but I actually find the fear talk and intimidation more interesting. Why do so many people cooperate in enforcing a social norm that if you told them what it was they wouldn't say they believed in it? If I said to you, do you think someone in the boardroom has more right to free speech than someone in the mailroom, would you agree with it? Probably not; yet when the mail clerk talks about their blog, you can bet they'll routinely get the Fear Talk.
What's more interesting is that this happens outside the workplace. Just ask a mommyblogger: they get lots of unthinking responses along the lines of, if you write on the net about your real experiences, some Internet weirdo will come get your kids. Now, if parents wanted to reduce their child's real risks, they'd be sure they were in approved car seats and drive less aggressively, since car accidents are the major cause of death for kids under 12. But you don't hear people say, "Aren't you afraid you're going to kill those kids?! It's scary out there on the Interstate, isn't it?!" when they're loading them into the car at the supermarket. But talk about blogging -- something that makes the mother's voice louder, makes her less invisible, and it's whoa, bring out the digital bogeyman and get those women back in the box.
-- Lisa Williams