Today’s Washington Post has an Amy Joyce story on the pitfalls of blogging in the workplace. Some bloggers who have said unkind words about their employers or their workplace have free expressed themselves into the unemployment line.

I suppose I am one who courts danger by occasionally blogging from work. I’ll put my productivity up against anyone’s and I am careful in writing about certain subjects, but I never write anything that I wouldn’t say to my boss or say to my whole organization in a staff meeting. But there’s the rub–the opportunities to speak frankly are few and far between. Most organizations don’t want to hear criticism, constructive or otherwise, and most subtly discourage innovate thinking or changes in time-honored practices or approaches. The “go along to get along” mentality is very strong.

Nonetheless, I’ve been surprised that blogs are almost exclusively the province of individuals who are not in positions of authority. In most organizations, much time is wasted at the water cooler wondering what the boss is thinking, what plans are being hatched, and what the organization’s leaders are really trying to accomplish. A boss with a blog and a vision could change the dynamics of an organization overnight.

Sadly, few private businesses, even the most successful, have a leader bold enough to share his/her ideas, observations, and passion on a regular basis. It’s also a lot of real work, not something to blow off on a subordinate.

I know that at one time Gov. Warner’s staff at least thought about him having a blog. Imagine if he did! Over the heads of the media, through the information barriers set up by the cabinet secretaries, past the tea leaf reading agency directors, and straight to the state employees who do or are supposed to do the work, straight to citizens, unfiltered–it would be amazing.

It would also be dangerous in this time when no utterance goes unrecorded or unnoticed by crack oppo researchers. It is said that the GOP has a treasure trove of questionable Howard Dean plain-speaking, recorded when he was a Governor trying to discuss issues as if he was just a regular Joe. When he turned out not to be the nominee, they didn’t need it.

Maybe someday we’ll see an organization with a leader whose primary means of communication with his/her far-flung empire is a blog. I’d like to be there.