The Official Line

The Official Line (TOL) has always been a powerful, if rather illusory, concept within corporations and organisations.  However, networked media environments have made it increasingly tricky to pin down.  In a distant age, TOL was very easy to define because it was whatever The Official Gatekeeper said it should be.  And if anyone challenged that view, it was quite easy to find the source and take suitably decisive action to keep others on their toes.  But these days the porous walls of multinationals and other mega-orgs mean TOL is becoming increasingly harder to hold - or even identify in the first place.  It's become more of A Blurry Line that people can interpret as they wish.  For instance, if a small business unit creates a blog that deepens valuable relationships with suppliers or customers, its very presence may puncture the sense of reassaurance that TOL brings to head office, regardless of what is actually being said.  Because blogs and other social media create that enticing sense of private conversations going public they tend not to go down very well with The Official Gatekeepers.  And often for good reason, especially if the company involved is subject to regulation of any kind.  So what to do?  Well, it's terribly easy to blame it on some subset of the emerging techno-mosh-pit such as 'the bloggers'.  But they are as an illusory bunch as TOL itself.  For having moved beyond the initial excitement about micro-publishing and social networking, we see that these new technologies are merely uncovering behaviour and opinions that have long been in existence.  People have always held strong views, disagreed, competed, plotted, been indiscreet or just plain dumb.  However, previously the hullabaloo of the internal bazaar was given a thorough mouthwash and became the sweet choral purity of The Official Line by the time it went public.  But these days TOL doesn't sound so pure and at worst can sound like a spivvy sales spin.  And that is why companies trying to hold TOL are finding it so hard.  But not as hard as the creeping sense that the answer has nothing to do with networked media itself.  As the walls begin to crumble, the only factor that will bring back the reassurance of TOL is increased trust levels that traditional hierachies have previously just enforced.  And without such trust, The Official Line will blur and blur until it just fades away completely.