A few days ago, I posted some comments on employee interpretations of a company’s blogging policy, and I was pleasantly surprised to see a number of acknowledgments and responses; see, for example, Stowe Boyd’s blog postings here, and some others there, and anywhere, and nowhere. I thought I’d add a few additional comments, but realized I should first identify the target audience to whom the comments are being addressed. It could include such folks as the

• PBM’s = pro-blogging managers
• ABM’s = anti-blogging managers
• PBE’s = pro-blogging employees
• ABE’s = anti-blogging employees
• PB’s = professional bloggers
• BR’s = blog readers

There’s no need to address the PBM’s, PBE’s, or PB’s; they’ve already accepted the benefits of blogging from within the corporate environment. And there’s not much point talking to the ABE’s: after all, if you’re an employee who’s opposed to the idea of blogging (for whatever reason), it doesn’t matter much whether your employer is positive or negative about the subject. The BR’s may have assumed, as they’ve read through thousands of the 57 million blogs floating around the Internet, that every employee is allowed to blog freely; hopefully my previous post dispelled that illusion. If not, here’s a statistic from a May 10, 2006 CIO Insight survey entitled, “Are CIOs Ignoring Web 2.0 Technologies?“: 40% of companies say they have no interest in blogs, and/or blogs are not on their corporate IT radar screen.

In any case, this brief commentary is aimed primarily at ABM’s — which assumes, of course, that there are managers out there who are opposed to the idea of their own employees writing blog entries for consumption by customers and other outsiders, but who nevertheless read random external blog postings, such as this one. But I think that’s a dangerous assumption: the conservative head-in-the-sand kind of attitude that says, “We don’t want our employees communicating with anyone in the outside world” is also likely to have the attitude of “nothing that external bloggers are saying would be of any interest or relevance to us.” And this is the kind of attitude that allows managers and their colleagues in Marketing, Corporate Relations, and PR to completely miss the comments that external bloggers are making about them, and that thousands of other people are reading or watching or listening to — such as the 834,257 people (as of today) who downloaded the YouTube video by a customer who filmed a Comcast technician sleeping on his couch, or the 25,385 people who downloaded the YouTube audio recording of a customer desperately trying to cancel his AOL service.

So, do keep in mind, Mr./Ms. ABM, that actions have consequences; and your negative policy about corporate blogging is effectively encouraging your employees to be passive oblivious not only to writing blogs, but also to reading blogs. If you really want all of your employees to have blinders on, that’s fine; it doesn’t matter to me, it won’t matter to those passive employees, and it will matter to your customers only as long as it takes them to realize that (a) nobody at your company is listening to what they have to say, and (b) some of your competitors are listening to them, and — miracle of miracles! — actually talking to them with a human voice.

Of course, not all employees are passive. What happens when PBE’s find themselves working for ABM’s? A rational discussion and dialogue is a good place to start; after all, ABM’s are not necessarily stupid, evil, or unsalvageable Luddites. But as I suggested in my earlier commentary on corporate blogging, the ABM’s policy often represents a far more fundamental attitude — e.g., “We don’t trust our employees” — that’s unlikely to be changed through any amount of so-called rational discussion.

If rational discussion doesn’t work, then what should a PBE do? Various forms of resistance, subterfuge, and guerrilla warfare are sometimes tempting; the obvious example is the “anonymous blog” written by an employee who is fundamentally loyal to his or her company, but for various reasons has decided to become an outspoken member of the “loyal opposition.” The ultimate form of this is the “whistleblower” blogger, though most of these folks make no attempt to remain anonymous; instead, they upload their comments and videos to YouTube or other blog outlets after they’ve quit or been fired.

For the PBE who wants to blog about problems and criticisms in an anonymous fashion, my advice is: don’t bother. It’s only a matter of time before you get caught, because the ABM culture in which you work will use the technological resources of its IT department and security professionals to track you down. If you’re blogging about honest-to-God crimes that your employer has committed, then you shouldn’t be working there anyway; gather whatever evidence is available (without exposing yourself to imprisonment, heavy fines, or physical danger), turn in your resignation, and then go public if you feel you must. But if your desire to blog is simply based on your sincere belief that your company could be building better products, offering better services, and being more responsive to its employees and customers … well, chances are that nobody is going to listen, unless you’ve got the acerbic wit of a Scott Adams “Dilbert” cartoonist. Indeed, you’d be better off just sending your examples of corporate idiocy to Scott, and letting him make up his own cartoons.

If you desperately want to blog about all the good things your company is doing, and all the wonderful products and services it offers to the marketplace, but your ABM-based corporate culture won’t let you do so … well, geez, what kind of screwed-up company are you working for anyway? In the long run, how can your company continue to build the kind of products, and offer the kind of services, that the marketplace wants if nobody in your company is allowed to talk to them in a human, one-on-one fashion? You may be working for a company that’s still coasting on its successful days from the 1960s, when it manufactured the best damn hula hoops the world had ever seen (link provided for those who have never heard of such things). Sooner or later, all of the hula hoop fans will suffer from rheumatoid arthritis and will stop wiggling their hips; they’ll die of old age, and their children will be looking for something different. If you and your colleagues aren’t talking to them — not the myopic Marketing Department, but you and the people who design, build, sell, and service those hula hoops (assuming that hula hoops can indeed be “serviced”) — then you won’t know what they want. And if your ABM bosses can’t figure that out, it’s not your fault, and it shouldn’t be your problem.

So my advice for the PBE’s working for ABM’s is simple: pack up your marbles and move on. Life is too short to do otherwise…