After a recent comment on my blog by Paul from ITWeb and an IOD presentation I attended, I was interested in what you should and should not be blogging about as the director of a company.
The basics:
As a basic principle a director has a fiduciary duty to the company and the shareholders. This boils down to: you must act in the best interests of the company and shareholders when acting as a director. This would certainly extend to the release of confidential information without proper authorisation. It all becomes much more serious when a company becomes public / widely-held.
So you have to ask yourself.. is the information public knowledge and could it harm the business? Would the other directors of the business he happy with the information you publish?
I found this interesting:
..the information in a blog can be considered to be of an uneven distribution and therefore could be considered prejudicial to others who would not normally find it.
I guess it makes sense, but.. truth is free, information costs.. you have to work at finding relevant information. I don’t see how people can expect to be guaranteed to be made aware of information which is freely available.
When I blog about the ventures I’m involved with I most definitely do not want to be the official voice with the clean clinical PR message.. nobody wants to read that. I think people like a more fun, personal and subjective view and a story.
Often I can’t share all the facts, but I’m betting it’s the story you remember more than the facts.
I suggest reading http://crookedtimber.org/2008/07/25/what-obligation-maximise-what/ before the directorship cool-aid gets to you.
Hi MWSBT
Thanks for the link. Reminds me of The Corporation movie.
It’s an interesting topic.. for the common good vs. for the good of the business.
In my case I was simply interested in which rules apply so I can use them as guidelines.
I write because I like to and because I want to record a few stories as I go along. Sometimes it’s nice to look back on.
You could argue that the reputation of a business is becoming more and more important.
The lesson I’ll take with me is that you should always consider the potential reputational risk when blogging or talking about a business.