Wigley and Associates

How to use weblogs as an effective local leadership tool

 

 

If you have an important decision to make or are facing a difficult problem that's not likely to be resolved any time soon, use your blog to chronicle the way you're dealing with these situations. Using your blog in this manner is a way to become better informed about an issue prior to a policy decision. Writing about what you're experiencing and learning deepens and clarifies your understanding. Just stringing a few sentences together as you attempt to describe the problem can often trigger ideas.

Blogging before a policy decision increases the likelihood that others will contribute suggestions and ideas about it because they sense that you're learning and willing to be influenced. They may offer some insights based on similar experiences.

Blogging publicly about how you go about becoming better informed gives the public and your colleagues a better idea about how you approach complex issues. And that can strengthen your potential influence on the issue. The archived blog posts show your efforts to understand the problem. And it increases the likelihood that people who disagree with your decision might appreciate the thoroughness of your approach to it.

Blogging about a problem/upcoming decision as you go along brings the issue alive for those who are marginally interested. Many citizens may not care about an issue that doesn't immediately affect them but observing how a local leader struggles with it can ignite their interest.

Lastly, the archive of your blog posts provides a convenient way to refer back to your thinking about an issue, a problem, a decision.  When the day comes that you find yourself changing your position on an issue and having to explain yourself, it adds credibility to be able to point to those weblog postings where your thinking at the time is detailed. It can make your new position seem less like "spin" to your readers and can minimise the impact of a "flip-flop" charge by your opponents.