If you have nothing to say, a podcast can't help

I read an interesting comic strip the other day, and it made me think about CEO communication. (The comic strips, if you play close attention, are rife with similarities to CEO communication).

This was a fairly new strip, so I haven't gotten to know the characters yet. They seem to be two small, fuzzy animals. But smart.

In the strip, one is saying to the other (and this is paraphrased, because I used the paper to light a fire the other night):

Fuzzy animal #1: 'So, once I get set up, you can just simply download my podcast and listen to it wherever you want to.'

Fuzzy animal #2: 'What will you be podcasting?'

Fuzzy animal #1: 'It will be like an audio version of my blog.'

'Fuzzy animal #2: 'Why would I want to listen to that?'

'Fuzzy animal #1: (Pause) . . . 'I don't know. I guess it would be better than just reading my blog.'

This is the problem I have with all this new technology, from an internal communications perspective.

Now we have blogs, and many people in the industry are whooping up the idea of a CEO having his own blog! And we can link that blog to an RSS feed, so employees can have constant updates from the CEO blog right at their desktop! And the CEO could do audio versions of the blog, or other audio messages, via Podcasts, so employees can listen to them anywhere, anytime.

Imagine! You're working out and instead of listening to the Counting Crows, you can get a Synergy Update from the CEO!

But here's my problem with all this stuff. We have never had a shortage of communication vehicles in the internal communications profession, have we? We've had print, and voice mail, and video, and face-to-face venues, and intranets and e-mail.

If a CEO wants to communicate with his employees, the mechanisms have always been there. Technology has certainly speeded things up . . . but the problem has never been a lack of vehicles.

The problem has been a lack of content. CEOs don't want to say anything! They are scared to communicate. And when the rare CEO comes along who does have something real to say, his legal advisors and HR people strangle him into submission.

I read thousands of CEO columns every year. For every 1,000 columns, there are two or three good ones. The rest are patronizing, insulting, and probably do more harm than good in the workforce.

So now we're going to give these clowns more tools? You think what sucks in print is going to read better on a blog? You think what sucks in a blog is going to suddenly come alive for people in a podcast?

In our rush to embrace the new technology, are we forgetting that good communication is still about the content, not the vehicle?

This is a question that needs to be asked: By giving our executives more channels to communicate without first fixing that communication, aren't we doing more harm than good?