Yesterday I did a concept meeting for a customer and again the magic of combining long term vision with small steps was there.

We talked about the implementation of an enterprise portal. In my concept for them, I stressed the fact to make small steps and to experiment with functionality that was new to the organization. For another customer I had experienced that doing small projects to start with, made such a great part of the organization enthousiastic that we had to make people do ”auditions” to pick the next projects. So I gave a couple of ideas that I thought would fit the organization at this time best. They agreed with the proposed features. But what made me most happy was the fact that, during the break, a manager Innovation came to me and said: “Now we are discussing how to bring blogging into projects, I have an idea to use the technique for workers who must report to me once a week. Can we discuss this sometime?”

So that is what I call the magic of small steps. Just do it, bring new tools, new functionality into the organization, on a level that you still can control, and make it visible, so people can get inspired. Then, have an open attitude towards new ideas that spring from it.

Though it was not new to me, the IBM podcast about blogging, and how underestimated this tool really is, got me inspired.  

The other day I talked about how to go with your company from blogging internally to externally.

What I said comes down to you need to train people to be good bloggers for your company. And a plan in where they start blogging internally to get rewarded later in the possibility for external blogging seems like a good idea. But you can add more intelligence to it than just that: attach a workflow to your internal blog, so that the blogger can decide to ask for publication on an external blog. After that it goes to the person who decides if it can be used for external communication.

So create workflows to promote internal blog postings to external blog postings.

Corporate blogging is -never mind the hype- still not a common thing. How to get blogging from an exception to a way of work shared by your workforce?

The way to go is like anything else you want to implement in your organization. Start with the early adopters, make them special and let them pave the way. When the early majority kicks in, start cheering towards groups that perform the best practices. Finally, make it a (moral) obligation.

Get blogging into your culture by rewarding early adaptors and oblige laggards.

For any organization it is difficult to start blogging externally. You don’t know what gets out there. How to manage?

I like the idea of taking small steps towards this goal. Start blogging internally. Make sure everybody is able to participate. After a while you know the guys that blog well and are trustworthy. Promote them to blog for your network (customers or partners). If that goes well, choose them to blog for your company externally.

Move towards external blogging one step at a time.