Holtz Communications + Technology

Internal conferences occur regularly in organizations. Members of a team—usually one dispersed geographically or among business units—come together for a day or more for presentations, networking and teambuilding. In many ways, these internal conferences aren’t much different than any other conference. Most attendees sit in a room and watch a presentation, either from outside experts or team leaders.

I’ve participated in a few internal…

My presentation this morning at the IABC 2010 World Conference expanded on my Stop Blocking theme, articulating the rationale for providing open access to social networks for employees but going a step beyond, identifying the value that can be extracted—ethically, authentically and transparently—from those networks by organizations smart enough to establish supporting models and processes.

What follows is the speaker support, developed in Prezi…

As more than half of the companies in the U.S. continue to block employee access to social media sites, the organizations that maintain open channels are positioned to innovate and compete at levels that could crush their competition.

Being poised to extract value from a workforce that is networked 24/7 isn’t the same as taking the steps required to get there.

I…

Once the Super Bowl—the most-viewed television program of all time—ended, 38.6 million people (about 36% of the Super Bowl audience) stuck around for the premiere of CBS’s new “reality” show, “Undercover Boss.”

In case you’ve just emerged from a coma and aren’t aware of the show, the premise is simple: Company leaders go undercover on the front lines of their companies to discover what it’s really like to do the heavy…

Awareness is rising of the impact on business of networked employees—those workers who are continuously connected to their social circles and can tap into them at will. The discussion seems to be shifting, ever so slowly, to the characteristics of companies that, rather than inhibiting these traits, want to reap the benefits of a networked workforce. Recent posts by Olivier Blanchard and

The Net has rendered the notion of corporate voices obsolete. The fact that anything a company says to one stakeholder audience can be found online by members of a different audience means inconsistencies in messages will be found, analyzed, and spread.

Nowhere is this more true than the traditional distinction between a company’s internal voice and the one it used to communicate with…