Whenever the subject comes up of how a CEO should engage directly with people via social media and social networks, an inevitable comment I often hear is along the lines of a CEO has better things to do with his or her time than poke friends or write a blog.
To all those who doubt there is any value in a CEO or other senior executive in an organization spending time on social networks or writing his or her own blog, I suggest you pay attention to what one CEO blogger has to say on this subject.
Words of wisdom from Tom Glocer, CEO of Reuters:
[…] Now it could be argued, I suppose, that imagination and experimentation should be left to more junior or younger staff, and the chief executive should only perform "serious" duties like strategy formulation and ordering people around. I think this is a lousy and disconnected way to lead. I believe that unless one interacts with and plays with the leading technology of the age, it is impossible to dream the big dreams, and difficult to create an environment in which creative individuals will feel at home. This does not mean that the ceo needs to program a third-party app on Facebook, but I believe it is ultimately more useful in understanding business concepts like viral marketing, crowd-sourcing or federated development to use a live example rather than wait for the Harvard Business Review article to appear in three years time.
