Conflicts Looming? Personal Brands versus Corporate

If you’ve read the Clue­train Man­i­festo, you know that blog­ging orig­i­nated from people’s burn­ing desire to let their authen­tic voice be heard. Early blog­gers were react­ing against the watered-down, polit­i­cally cor­rect mes­sages they were read­ing in the pub­lic media or writ­ing for their employ­ers.

I’m now start­ing to run into clients who want their employ­ees to be more proac­tively engaged in the blo­gos­phere – active par­tic­i­pants in the inter­ac­tions between the com­pany and its part­ners, or the com­pany and its cus­tomers. It’s a praise­wor­thy goal on the part of these com­pa­nies. It’s chal­leng­ing them to think quite dif­fer­ently about inbound and out­bound com­mu­ni­ca­tions, to revisit cor­po­rate poli­cies, etc., etc.

But I can’t help but won­der what will hap­pen when peo­ple who are writ­ing out of their authen­tic hearts and minds inevitably get into con­flict with their employ­ers. In some cases that con­flict will arise out of the employee’s desire to tell the unvar­nished truth – the rea­sons for an uncor­rected prod­uct defect or late deliv­ery to mar­ket. In extreme cases this will take the form of whis­tle blow­ing – some­thing that can ben­e­fit all of us if a com­pany has been behav­ing egre­giously. (Think Enron…)

Less defen­si­ble, of course, are sit­u­a­tions when an employee know­ingly or inad­ver­tently reveals a company’s trade secrets. Or exposes the com­pany to increased com­pet­i­tive threat by drop­ping enough clues to enable smart rivals to have a “win­dow” into the company’s plans.

His­tor­i­cally when con­flicts like this have emerged, all the power has been vested in the com­pany. At best the employee is warned and gets a black mark in his employee file. If the sit­u­a­tion war­rants it, the employee may well be ter­mi­nated.

But what hap­pens when the employee’s blog entries develop such a large fol­low­ing that they start to affect the company’s search rank­ings or its rep­u­ta­tion? What hap­pens when indi­vid­u­als’ per­sonal brand asso­ci­a­tions are trans­ferred to their employer?

I can imag­ine some very inter­est­ing con­ver­sa­tions and pol­icy debates between HR man­agers and CMOs over the months and years to come.