Business and Blogging

Succession Planning for Corporate Blogs

by Des Walsh on May 11th, 2007

I used to think succession planning in business was essentially or primarily about having a process and a plan to replace the CEO when he or she moved on - or was moved on.

That was a while ago and shows that in fact I wasn’t thinking a lot about succession planning.

My friend Stephen Sandor, an insurance expert and Principal of Complete Cover, has helped me understand the importance of a more comprehensive approach to succession planning, and by no means just for corporations. It’s just as essential for the smallest “mom and pop” business as for the multinational corporation.

Not just in terms of the people involved, but also, and importantly, in terms of functions and responsibilities.

Such as blogging.

Isn’t that being a bit too particular?

Not really. Experienced bloggers will tell you that however much they enjoy it, there is a lot of commitment involved and a lot of time to be invested. And there are plenty of extra challenges for corporate bloggers, which do not need to be faced, or not so much, by individual, freelance bloggers.

If a CEO or other senior executive in a corporation is the key blogger and succeeds in establishing a blog as a very effective channel for the corporation to communicate interactively with customers and would-be customers, and if that executive moves on, whether retiring or going to another company, is all that investment of time (which equals money) to be wasted?

Wouldn’t it be better to have a plan, and people, in place to ensure continuity?

Yes, you could wait till someone moves on or is about to move on and then nominate someone to step into the breach. But how confident can the corporation be that the nominated “someone” is going to be able to handle immediately the challenges of writing well, consistently, appropriately, interestingly, without having had any serious preparation?

In his post Boeing Quietly Masterminds First Ever Corporate Blog Spinoff, Rohit Bhargava, VP Interactive Marketing at Ogilvy Worldwide, tells the story of a very neat corporate blog transition in corporate blog authoring.

The story is particularly entertaining because when Randy Baseler, Chief Marketing Officer and author of the eponymous Randy’s Journal, retired from the company after thirty plus years of service and having built up a loyal readership for the blog, the corporation found another Randy in an appropriate position and ready to take on the challenge.

So it’s still Randy’s Journal, the main obvious differences being that:

a) the author is now Randy Tinseth, Chief Marketing Officer for Boeing Commercial Airlines in Seattle and

b) his picture has replaced that of the original Randy.

As Rohit remarks:

Just wait - in time this may become the definitive case study for other corporations dealing with the challenge of replacing retiring or defecting corporate bloggers without losing the credibility and voice they have spent months or years building.

Not every company will be able to replace a prominent blogger with one of the same name, and I haven’t read anywhere that Boeing had the whole exercise planned in advance. Maybe they did. Maybe they were just lucky.

But whatever the case with Boeing, why would a company rely on luck, assuming they see strategic value in blogging? Why not have a plan in place? This could include having one or more (preferably more) bloggers understudying the most prominent blogger, who might or might not be the CEO, so that when the time comes there is someone experienced in corporate blogging and with a good understanding of the public relations and governance sensitivities.

There is another issue here. Is it a good idea, in terms of continuity and succession planning, for the company’s blog, or most prominent blog, to carry the name of the current author? Would it not be better to have a name which allowed for an easier transition of authors?

Then again, something corporate and generic such as “The Boeing Blog” might not have attracted the readership of the very personally named - and authored - “Randy’s Journal”.

via: Digital Media Wire

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POSTED IN: Branding, Corporate, General, Policy, Risk Management