I was running a daylong seminar that led one of the participants to fire off a blogging proposal to her CEO via her Blackberry. She shared with me the two-word answer that came back within minutes:

“No time.”

It wasn’t the first time I’ve heard this issue raised; I’m certain it won’t be the last. Whether it’s a CEO or any other employee, if it makes sense for that individual to communicate by blogging, time shouldn’t be a problem. Here are some thoughts on getting around the “no time” argument.

Reallocating resources

One executive with whom I spoke recalled receiving a communique from his company’s board of directors. The board took issue with the amount of time this CEO was committing to his blog. His answer was succinct: He wasn’t spending any more time communicating now than he was before he took up blogging.

Blogging is a new communication channel. Before blogs became widely available and accepted, executives made do with the channels available to them: one-on-one phone calls, conference calls, speeches, road shows, letters, email and so on. I have heard from a number of CEOs that blogs are more effective than any of these tools for a variety of communications. Therefore, they have replaced the use of such channels with blogging. In aggregate, though, they’re spending just as much time fulfilling their role as the company’s chief communicator.

As Thomas Nelson CEO Michael Hyatt put it (in an interview for my forthcoming book), “???At least a third of my job needs to be spent on communication. There are a lot of ways to do that, (such as) emails, phone calls, and speaking publicly. A blog is just another tool to do what a good CEO does: communicate.” (Hyatt addressed the time he commits to blogging in this post.)

Paul Levy, CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital in Massachussettes (also interviewed for the book), concurs: “Part of the job of a CEO is to explain your mission and actions to the public. Why wouldn???t you use one of the greatest communication tools that exists to do that????

It’s not an essay

A lot of leaders think anything they write needs to be a 1,500-word masterpiece. They’re accustomed to these missives from their annual shareholder letters and those columns that used to appear on the inside front cover of employee magazines.

Readers of blogs, however, don’t want 1,500-word posts. If every post were that long, people would probably stop reading blogs. Short, pithy observastions, quick questions (such as the time Michael Hyatt asked for feedback on his proposed employee blogging policy), brief activity updates and terse reactions to news and issues are all preferable to essay-length posts. A typical post from Bill Marriott, CEO of Marriott International, runs under 500 words.

Writing (per se) not required

Speaking of Bill Marriott, he doesn’t write his blog at all. No, it’s not ghost-written. He records his posts into a digital recorder, which is transcribed (word for word) by his communication staff. On the blog, you have the option of reading the post or listening to it. An HP executive calls his posts into a voice mail line set up just for that purpose; the communications staff transcribes it for his intranet-based blog. There’s no need for any executive to sit at a keyboard and pound out a post.

Group blogs

Southwest Airlines’ Nuts About Southwest blog is a perfect example of a group blog to which company leaders can contribute when it’s appropriate. Authored by a group of employees, Nuts About Southwest has featured only a few posts by CEO Gary Kelly, who writes on the blog when the voice of the CEO is the appropriate one to address a specific issue. Rick Wagoner, CEO of General Motors, has taken the same approach on GM’s blogs.

ROI

Tom Lehrer noted that life is like a sewer. What you get out of it, he said, depends upon what you put into it. Any number of executives who have undertaken blogging have been rewarded with a return on the investment in their time. This ROI can take the shape of improved relationships with key publics, better innovation, heightened employee commitment, conversation that leads to tangible actions and results (such as Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz’s blog-based conversation with SEC Chairman Christopher Cox, leading to changes in Reg FD), and even direct sales (Bill Marriott credits a link from his blog to Marriott’s reservations system with producing hundreds of thousands of dollars of revenue).

Should a CEO blog?

It depends. There are certainly plenty of good reasons CEOs can cite for not blogging. In fact, there are CEOs I wouldn’t let anywhere near a blog. They don’t have the conversational manner required of blogging, they don’t have anything interesting to say, or they’re flashpoints for controversy. Bob Lutz, GM’s vice chairman, is the company’s principal blogger because the Fastlane blog is about cars, not the vehicle business (including labor, finance, and other non-car topics). CEOs who won’t maintain the commitment to blog regularly should not start one. And, frankly, a CEO is like anyone else: She has to want to blog. If she doesn’t, drop it.

But for CEOs otherwise inclined to blog if not for the time commitment shouldn’t let that stand in their way.