Carole Brown is Chair of the Chicago Transit Authority and maintains a blog called Ask Carole. The blog’s purpose:
“I created this blog to answer some of the questions people have been asking about the CTA’s funding situation. We on the board have asked many of these same questions, and we want to help get the word out. So please feel free to send comments or questions to CTAboard@transitchicago.com, and check back regularly for answers and updates to our efforts to increase transit funding. — Carole”
Brown’s blog seemingly has a much wider purpose than just funding. She tackles all sorts of issues related to the CTA — performance measures, maintenance issues, customer service, equipment purchases, policy changes, etc. Her blog’s purpose statement should be amended.
She’s got an audience of readers who chime in with a dozen or more comments on nearly every post. In part, this seems due to her engaging writing style in which she both teaches her audience and responds to their collective concerns, e.g. here when she writes “There are several great comments and questions in response to the performance measure update…”
She also responds occasionally to critical comments posted to the CTA Tattler blog, for example here when she writes “Kevin O’Neil and many others are continuing to hold our feet to the fire on improving customer communications during service disruptions…” and she actually links to a Tattler blog entry by Mr. O’Neill. This is very gutsy thing to do and adds tremendously to her overall believability, authenticity, and approachability. No wonder people post comments.
She’s recently started to add photos to blog entries, using them to teach in this post (those photos should enlarge when clicked but they don’t) and to recognize/affirm people in this one (photo correctly enlarges.) I hope she continues adding photos to nearly every post.
Overall, this is a very good leadership weblog. It shows what can be done with just one or two posts per month… not enough for a CEO/Executive Director/President who’s a full-time employee but enough for a board chair of a large organization. She’s to be commended.
Some quick recommendations: complete the profile or link it to somewhere where there is one; abandon Blogger in favor of a platform like Typepad or WordPress that allows posts to be put into categories; and link to the blog from several obvious places on the CTA main website. I could only find a link to her blog on the Board Meetings page… there should one on this page and better yet, on a homepage sidebar.
[This profile is part of my ongoing Leaders who blog series that I began in June, 2006]
