{"id":994,"date":"2008-06-03T10:08:47","date_gmt":"2008-06-03T09:08:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/?p=994"},"modified":"2008-06-03T10:53:30","modified_gmt":"2008-06-03T09:53:30","slug":"the-case-of-the-disappearing-reed-elsevier-blog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/2008\/06\/the-case-of-the-disappearing-reed-elsevier-blog\/","title":{"rendered":"The case of the disappearing Reed Elsevier blog"},"content":{"rendered":"

T<\/span>he Telegraph<\/strong><\/em> reports today<\/a> that Reed Elsevier<\/strong> is packaging up an HP deal (ok, a loan) for potential buyers of Reed Business Information<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

The fate of RBI is a matter of academic interest to business watchers and – well, academics – but if you actually work there it’s a little more interesting. Like, ‘your livelihood’ interesting.<\/p>\n

So, a while back, an RBI employee and recent MBA, Stephen Thair<\/strong> set up a blog to analyse and comment on the sell-off – he called it Divestment Watch<\/strong><\/a> (warning: dead link<\/em>).<\/p>\n

Of course, any employee could set up an anonymous blog to snipe, speculate and sling mud. <\/p>\n

Thair’s blog was a thoughtful and open attempt to engage with a business process that loomed rather large over his – and his colleagues’ – future.<\/p>\n

It isn’t there any more, although you can find it cached<\/a> on Google. I encountered Thair when he left a comment on this blog and I became a subscriber. I haven’t spoken to him directly.<\/p>\n

I don’t know the reasons for the blog’s disappearance in early May. But if Thair has been told to shut it down then I think it’s a missed opportunity for Reed Elsevier to explore their options publicly, and it sends out yet another lousy message to people soon to be formerly known as employees.<\/p>\n

We talk about companies needing to engage and communicate. It isn’t just a top down, inside out process. It isn’t always about communicating the good and the exciting.<\/p>\n

The easiest way of managing these things is silence. Silence exiting employees with contract clauses. Silence existing employees with a quiet word. But is silence the only way of handling it?<\/p>\n

Letting responsible employees communicate responsibly may be another option. Comments appreciated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Telegraph reports today that Reed Elsevier is packaging up an HP deal (ok, a loan) for potential buyers of Reed Business Information. The fate of RBI is a matter of academic interest to business watchers and – well, academics – but if you actually work there it’s a little more interesting. Like, ‘your livelihood’ […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[81],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=994"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/994\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}