Over the last week, I’ve seen two of my blogging buddies from London Business School write ‘uh sorry I haven’t posted’ riffs. One sun set his blog mentioning the blog was about the MBA, the MBA is over, so – we’ll thanks for all the fish. The other post didn’t sign off, but mentioned how she has been dealing with the larger issues of life, ironically caused by how she now views the world thanks to the MBA.
These topics got me thinking about missions and how when one accomplishes a mission – like having a blog targeted toward the MBA – it becomes pretty damn hard to keep going forward once the mission is complete. Events are like this. All the work goes into the front end of the project, then the event happens, and all the inspiration to finish off the paperwork, write the final 3 questions of the planning guide or, you know, pay bills become less important.
Can one change their mission for a blog or a company? Of course, the folks at Nokia found a way, as did Apple. Theodore Levitt famously wrote about the decline of the train industry and that they let other firms take customers away from them because they assumed they were in the railroad business rather than the transportation business.
So, one answer to a huge strategy shift is taking one step back from the current activities. It’s not easy, because one step back from ‘me writing about the MBA’ is essentially ‘my experiences.’ Those wishing to miss the fact that people enjoy the way some write about their experiences will find themselves wondering what to write next.
Personally, I don’t have this problem because my little blog has always had the same mission – post things that interest the author and, if possible, make him laugh or feel better about something he can’t change right now. I’ve killed a lot of posts because the finished result bored me, and I have loved some that made me laugh out loud. Thanks to the MBA links and friends I made during the MBA more people than I ever would have imagined visited this site (for the record, I never imagined my readership to go over 11 people so the 20 which glanced at this is far above my original estimations :))
The fact some of my closest friends occasionally leave comments is awesome and greatly appreciated. I wonder why some of the alumna MBA bloggers I know don’t throw themselves into building their blogs around their current careers & look to those communities? It’s the same tactics they took to build their MBA blogs.
Probably the same reason I haven’t – until now – it never crossed my mind.
That’ll be me then! :-)
I agree, for me the purpose of the blog started off being the documentation of my MBA journey and get in touch with others and provide others a glimpse into a world that I had no idea what it would be like. Then as I kept on going, I think the purpose changed. Writing lets me blow off steam, formulate thoughts and keeps me sane (or insane?). But if you look at the stats, most people come to the blog looking for LBS related information. So now the question for me is: do I close this blog down and start a new one (don’t really want to), or keep on going and don’t care what the audience thinks (which is probably what’s going to happen).
Maybe it’s part of a larger transformation for me: from identifying with the MBA every single minute of every day (past 3 years), it’s become less important. A smaller part. More over and done with. So now I have to get used to having to find other stuff to write about. Maybe I should continue the blog as the MADS blog :-))
N