Robert Bruner published a bestselling book called 'The Panic Of 1907 right in the middle of the panic of 2007,' but hey, the recession's almost over and I don't feel like talking to him about that. A finance scholar, the dean of Darden School Of Business at the University of Virginia has also written Deals From Hell: M&A Lessons That Rise Above The Ashes, but right now, that doesn't make for an appealing subject either. Instead, the dean and I decide to talk about blogging and twittering.
Bruner has one of the most readable blogs I've seen in a long time. His posts are fairly frequent and most of them are so original, well thought out and sincere (as opposed to cynical) that they may actually be called 'wise,' a term that's very seldom used in its true sense these days. Bruner's posts come with innumerable quotes from literature and his erudition touches subjects ranging from leadership and ethics to innovation and work-life balance, often linking them to contemporary events.
Take, for example, his post on the terrorist attack on Mumbai, where he begins with a quote from Stephen Spender's I Think Continually Of Those Who Were Truly Great and then goes on draw some lessons from the tragedy — that courage is the cardinal virtue, that you have to lead from where you are. Or The Compleat Vacationer, a post in which he mulls on the concept of the staycation, where you stay at home and visit nearby places to experience the unfamiliar and exotic.
"A blog is like a huge chalkboard that everyone can read — it helps me extend the reach of my teaching well beyond the classroom," says Bruner. "I also do it because it allows me to inform my audience, frame an agenda and shape discussion. That's something leaders need to do." Why, then, are so few CEOs blogging? Or, to put it better, why do so few CEOs want to blog? In a recent posting titled Why blog? Why Twitter?, Bruner recalls one CEO friend saying "I don't want to look like a fool." The fact is, many top company CEOs do have an official blog — but even a cursory reading makes it obvious they're not the ones writing it.
"Most CEO blogs lack the personal touch," says Bruner. "The posts seem to be written by the company's public relations (PR) department, in league with it's lawyers. There's this perception that a CEO blog is a PR tool, a way of accessing a wide audience and that people will read whatever you write in it. That's a misconception. If your posts are bland, people won't read them, unless maybe they're located far from company headquarters and really desperate for information . The ability to shape the thinking of your community starts with having a strong point of view and then presenting it crisply. Most CEO blogs, on the other hand, have safe views, and they're presented dully."
But what of frankly expressed opinions that get people into trouble? Bruner hasn't heard of the misadventures of Shashi Tharoor on Twitter — which is essentially a blog with a restriction of 140 characters per posting — but he smiles and nods very understandingly when I tell him. "It takes a while to get the knack of it," he says. "In the initial stages, it's useful to have a sounding board to check on the appropriateness of you're posting. It's an excellent discipline for CEOs. Most of them are used seeing nodding heads whenever they express a view. In a blog, you get comments, sometimes very bitter and critical. It's very unlike e-mail , which the community often views as so much spam."
A high grade blog is obviously a time consuming process and Bruner's advice to busy executives who would be bloggers is to slow down occasionally and make time to reflect on "what it is that delights or pains them most," when they choose their subjects. "Great writing starts from the heart," he says. "But then, you have to educate yourself a bit on the subject before you write or else you might express an opinion that has no basis. Finally, when you write, it's best to pretend you're speaking to a friend or a sympathetic acquaintance."
Though he's been blogging for years now, Bruner never uploads the first draft of his posts — he still takes care to re-work and edit his writing before sending it into the blogosphere . It takes time, but it's obviously worth it. "Intellectuals love to blog," he says. "The blogs of the famous intellectuals constantly refer to each another and contain very stimulating debate. Take Paul Krugman or Gregory Mankiw, economists at two ends of the spectrum. Their arguments are at a level of detail that average readers won't find interesting, but they do it anyway."
Academics like Bruner find themselves pulled into the blogosphere in part because their net-savvy students demand it of them. "Once these students graduate into the outside world, they will expect the same thing from the leadership there," says the dean.
These days, Bruner is also on Twitter. "You can't make a very sophisticated statement with the 140 characters restriction," he says, "but I Tweet pointers to my blog posts. The Twitter and blog audience doesn't overlap much — they're actually complementary — but combined together , they're high impact."
Bruner's visiting India for the fifth year in a row, meeting prospective students and recruiters and his next couple of blog postings are surely going to be about this trip. In conclusion , I ask the author of The Panic Of 1907 a question he's probably been asked many times: now that this recession has ended, will there be another economic crisis anytime soon? His answer: definitely . His explanation: "Regulation in the financial sector is always based on problems faced in the past, whereas financial markets are incredibly inventive, far ahead of the regulators capacity to anticipate."