I was reminded that I hadn't posted a blog entry recently and wanted to remedy the situation. When presented with my lack of posting, my first response was that "I had lacked time" recently due to client work. I was then reminded that despite our staff being 100% billable, we still expected them to blog.
Touche.
That got me thinking – was it really time? The answer is "no". We can always find the time. What the real root causes are that can impact regular blogging are:
- work that saps creativity in other areas of thinking
- distractions in our day that break an innovation cycle
- too much tactical activity and not enough strategic activity
These three elements are killers for innovation inside organizations. Blogging requires us to be innovative, if we are using the tool as more than just "reporting the news". In order to be able to come up with good, insightful blogs, your mental state and working environment needs to enable that.
If you look back, for instance, I was able to produce a number of good blog posts during the lead-up to MicroStrategy and throughout the conference and then post conference. Why? Was it having more time? Not really. I was on an interesting client engagement and the exciting stuff coming out of the BI space was thought-provoking, hence good blog posts. As I shifted into more routine consulting work for another client after that, the creative-well dried up. Hence, no blogging, here at the PXLTD blog or my own personal blog.
So how do we strike a balance? If I want to encourage my staff to blog, I need to give them the right ingredients, which include inspiration, interesting client opportunities and less distractions. With those key ingredients, people will find the time, no matter how busy they are, myself included. Being able to intersperse those ingredients amongst our client work (which sometimes is routine and not overly creative) is important.
Going forward, I'm going to put a standing task in my calender…not to blog – you can't force that process. Rather, I will add a task to look for and forward on items of interest and to seek out interesting opportunities that will spark creativity for myself and my staff. That in turn, should spark some interesting blogging ideas even when we find ourselves in the midst of normal client work.
