I've been thinking and talking about doing this for months. Writing a "real" CEO blog. Not that I'm a "CEO". I'm officially a "President", and my company is tiny - with only 20 employees - so truly, it is a bit embarrassing to even say I am writing a "President blog".
But one has to start somewhere. And an entertaining, thoughtful "leadership" blog from a small-potatoes business beats the stuffing out of the marketing drivel that emanates from so many large corporation blogs.
What would it mean to write a real CEO blog, as opposed to a fake CEO blog? Well, for starters, it needs some background music for inspiration. A little Springsteen, perhaps. And so I am delighted to have just discovered that when I close the door to my office and turn up my music, no one else can hear me.
A good CEO blog also needs a bit of literary flair. Some honesty. Humor. A taste for the story. The instinct to peer beyond corners and see things happening before anyone else.
There is a reason people love reading Pmarca (Mark Andreesen) and Blogmaverick (Mark Cuban), and there is a reason that Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz's blog leaves people a little bit cold (or bored). Pmarca and Blogmaverick - each in different ways - engage the world at the level of ideas and opinions.
The two Marks could not be more different in their styles - Andreesen is simply a massive brain jonesed on caffeine. Nothing escapes his interest and his voice is polymathically perverse. Always a fun, engaging, enlightening read (his latest post is about the history of newspapers).
Where Andreesen is the sunny lad you might want your daughter to marry, Cuban is his dark, brooding twin - a businessman's Marky Mark. More self-absorbed, opinionated, angrier, more the pot-stirrer (his latest post is about his feud with Bill O'Reilly), Cuban is the shadowed, slightly dangerous angel about whom your daughter would fantasize.
By contrast, the problem with Jonathan Schwartz and his sunless Sun blog is that it casts zero light and zero shadow. He posts fairly irregularly - always about Sun technology and Sun customers and Sun finances - and despite the fact that he sports a ponytail (perhaps twinning himself with me, the lesser Schwartz, who is both bald and grey), there is nothing remotely hip or edgy or interesting about any of these posts, which because of their irregular timing, also come across as being somewhat random.
Frankly, although I have no idea what the traffic figures are for any of these blogs, my hunch is that Pmarca and Blogmaverick relentlessly pound Jonathan's Blog when it comes to readers and visits. Honesty and humor will always trump PR
Anyway, I do want Knowledge Mosaic to have a voice, and I do see the Wired Mosaic blog as a way to offer this voice. There is no doubt that an authentic, powerful, vivid voice for a business can give it identity and presence, and thereby yield a significant marketing and sales benefit. There is no reason to apologize for pursuing these goals, of course.
That said, I truly believe the best service I can offer Knowledge Mosaic, even from a marketing standpoint, is to speak from my heart about the events and ideas that excite me - not just as they pertain to Knowledge Mosaic, or even to the world of legal, regulatory, and compliance matters - but as they pertain to and resonate with the most significant trends and groundswells of our time.
So here is my commitment as a "CEO blogger". To post regularly, fearlessly, fairly, and on topics that will resonate. I know myself. I will never be a blogger like Broc Romanek, who knows the ins and outs of SEC regulation and compliance as well as he knows the guitar solo from Stairway to Heaven. Nor will I ever forge the lovely, arcing synthesis of literature and liability that characterizes the posts of everyone's favorite D&O attorney, Kevin LaCroix. But I can commit to writing honestly and openly about a broad range of topics that include, but are not limited to, the work we are doing at Knowledge Mosaic; the challenges and satisfactions of operating a small business such as ours; the trends and developments in the world of business law, regulation, and compliance; and the implications and meaning of technology transformations. Along with those topics, I also expect to interweave conversations about - among other things - history, politics, sports, culture, brain science, cosmology, religion, consciousness, and good as it stands in relation to evil.
All the things, in short, that are calculated to inspire the ire of Bill O'Reilly.
I also understand that in undertaking a project of this sort, that I am representing my company and so will do everything in my power to honor that role and responsibility.
In the coming months, we will be revamping the KM Blogwatch to allow comments on all of our posts. In the meantime, I want to invite anyone with feedback on my posts to write me directly at pschwartz@knowledgemosaic.com. I will be sure to publish any and all thoughtful replies to my posts, and those of others in our KM Blogwatch blogging community. You also can go to the full Wired Mosaic blog at any time (and there find a photo that confirms that I am not the hirsute member of the Schwartz tribe). On that site, you can of course publish comments. If things go well, we may migrate it to the Knowledge Mosaic website at some point in the future.
