Today I first read about The Flip, a smart and small video camcorder for those small videos. The camera is both simple to operate, but also simple to connect to your computer and sharing the video on e.g. YouTube afterwards.

What is most astonishing about this camera: You can get about 20 Flips, for the price of one SR12!

Imagine buying 50 Flips for your company, giving them out to employees or customers and asking them to do themed videos on what your company does for customer care, work happiness, or whatever story you want to get out there. The price is so low now, that everyone should try this out!

“Never look back, unless you are planning to go that way” – Henry David Thoreau

Back to the title. I am wondering a lot these days why you don’t see more CEOs or political leaders blogging, the standard answer from most of them seems to be that they are too busy. As I said above, I think it’s about routines and prioritization. Especially for political leaders, the blog should be equally important as tv interviews or photoshoots for magazines.

I was pretty annoyed to read in Weekendavisen (scroll to page 3) this weekend, that Naser Khader (leader of new danish party New Alliance) spent a few hours on a photoshoot for some small magazine, this is while he still haven’t blogged a single word! This guy talks and talks about revolutionizing the danish tax system, our foreign policy and a lot more, but haven’t really opened up a dialogue on the subject yet. One might begin to believe that Naser is afraid of criticism. His NA-colleague Lars Kolind is not though, we just helped him relaunch his blog this morning. Will be interesting to follow.

I have now asked a few CEOs why they don’t blog and some actually gave some chocking answers. One told me that he was afraid to run out of material, that after blogging for – say – 14 days, he wouldn’t know what to write. Erh, that really struck me. One can be the leader of 5000 people and not have anything, even remotely, interesting to say? Then I think the problem is a lot bigger than not blogging.

Seriously, CEOs and political leaders of Europe, do you have nothing to say? Or is it really because you are all afraid to open up the decision-making process just one tiny bit?

(PS: I thought we lived in a world where leadership and facilitation reign, not a Henry-Ford-illusionary world where control and closed silos are in place.)

On the second last page there is a check-list of 10 points to see if you are “living the strategy”, including “I reach high” and “I make things happen” and “I fuss over the grey areas”. Only this last did I tick with conviction, thinking we were back on hairdos again. But then it turned out to be referring to an obsession with integrity, which I don’t suffer from quite so badly.

There is much to marvel at in the Little Blue Book but the pièce de resistance is the page entitled Our Pledge. “The promise of our brand. To that we pledge allegiance,” it says.

Comparing Deloitte’s Blue Book to the Mao’s Red Book:

Apart from the difference in colour, the two books have much in common. Both came with the instruction that they should be carried around and referred to often. The red book was a tool for brainwashing and torture. The blue book is also a tool for brainwashing and torture, though the brainwashing is not terribly likely to succeed and the torture is suffered by business logic, taste and style.

I can understand the intention behind Deloitte’s move, but really I am having a hard time figuring about why they chose to communicate their values like that. I am seeing a big boring glass-office in my mind, with “values” written on the walls to remind the people of the organization why they are really there. Sigh.

If we can agree on the intention of getting some common ground on corporate values, what should Deloitte then have done? I think it would have been pretty interesting experimenting with some collaborative storytelling methods, like e.g. photosharing groups.