There are a lot of people I have met over the past few years who have asked the proverbial question, “Who has time to blog?”

For me, the answer lately has been ‘not me’ - though I continue link blogging here, photo blogging and Twittering because it takes little effort and can be fit in between other tasks and activities. In a meeting with Shel Israel this afternoon, Shel pointed out how woefully out of touch I am with what he has been writing about lately - which is embarrasing because I am working with him on our first Social Media Club Workshop series and I genuinely find his blog well written and insightful.

As some of you know, I don’t regularly use an RSS reader, though I probably should - the thing is, not being a regular RSS Feed Reader works as a blanket excuse for why I am not up to date on the happenings of the 1,000+ people I have met and would like to follow if I had the time. For the past few months, I have not had the time to do 80% of what I would like to be doing and about 60% of what I must be doing. In fact, I had a conversation yesterday with some friends about how we have had to expend so much energy in managing the Club to host conversations about Social Media, that we have little time to actually produce it or to be fully engaged in the conversations about it, eventhough it is all around me every day.

This brings me back to one of the drums I have been beating for a long time - the purpose of an organization is to organize resources (human, capital and systemic) to complete tasks that serve the needs of a group of people. The organization should be managing resources to complete activities that ensure desired outcomes. The trouble is, that most organizations are managing too few resources in support of too many activities, resulting in the inevitable opportunities slipping through the cracks, and a lower level of quality in the outcomes being produced. This requires decreasing the number of expected outcomes (focus) and gaining better utilization of the resources at your disposal, which actually takes more time to do effectively…

So this is where I come to the title of my post - the conversations take time, which there is little of while investing the majority of your energy in the management (and development) of a (fledgling) organization. This is ultimately one of the main reasons why many business people ask the question about having time to blog. Given the fact that they are already employing too few resources against too many activities, how can another communications channel, that takes real time to cultivate, be properly engaged?

From my perspective, this points to a real need to ensure that everyone understands the roles they fulfill, and that they are part of a team with adequate authority and available time to participate in the conversation, with enough energy dedicated to manage where and when and with whom conversations should be taking place. I know of a few companies out there that are starting to properly staff and realign their management responsibilities to do this right such as Lenovo and Dell, but am wondering who else is out there investing the time and energy it takes to not only do this, but to do it right.

Do you know of any good case studies in regards to staffing for conversations with customers? What about organizations that understand the value of conversations with customers and the need to invest the management energy in cultivating better conversations?