Glove Girl Cheat Sheet -- A Blogger In Their Midst

On Sunday I'll be presenting the case study I did for Harvard Business Review called "A Blogger In Their Midst" I wanted to post some important details which will help you during my session whether you've had time to read the case or not. I worked at Harvard doing events and I know in all the excitement and fun of attending a conference no matter how much time you think you'll have to read something -- it's really hard to get around to it.

So here's the basics of the case you'll need to follow my presentation. First the executive summary from HBR:

"It was five minutes before show time, and only 15 people had wandered into the conference room to hear Lancaster-Webb CEO Will Somerset introduce the company's latest line of surgical gloves. More important, sales prospect Samuel Taylor, medical director of the Houston Clinic, had failed to show. Will walked out of the ballroom to steady his nerves and noticed a spillover crowd down the hall. He made a "What's up?" gesture to Judy Chen, Lancaster-Webb's communications chief. She came over to him. "It's Glove Girl. You know, the blogger," Judy said, as if this explained anything. "I think she may have stolen your crowd." "Who is she?" Will asked. Glove Girl was a factory worker at Lancaster-Webb, whose always outspoken, often informative postings on her web log had developed quite a following. Will was new to the world of blogging, but he quickly learned about its power in a briefing with his staff. After Glove Girl had raved about Lancaster-Webb's older SteriTouch disposable gloves, orders had surged. More recently, though, Glove Girl had questioned the Houston Clinic's business practices, posting damaging information at her site about its rate of cesarean deliveries--to Sam Taylor's consternation. This fictional case study considers the question of whether a highly credible, but sometimes inaccurate and often indiscreet, online diarist is more of a liability than an asset to her employer. What, if anything, should Will do about Glove Girl? Four commentators--David Weinberger, author of Small Pieces Loosely Joined; Pamela Samuelson, a professor of law and information management at the University of California, Berkeley; Ray Ozzie, CEO and chairman of Groove Networks; and Erin Motameni, vice-president of human resources at EMC--offer expert advice."

CHARACTERS:

Employees of Lancaster-Webb, Medical Glove Manufacturer:

---Will Somerset, CEO, Lancaster-Webb
---Glove Girl, the blogger from Lancaster-Webb's shop floor
---Judy Chen, Head of Corporate Communications, Lancaster-Webb
---Evan Jones, VP of Marketing, Lancaster-Webb
---Jordan Longstreth, Legal Counsel to Lancaster-Webb

Prospects and clients of L-W:

---Dr. Samuel Taylor, Medical Director of the Houston Clinic and sales prospect
---"Head of Nursing" -- nameless character from the Houston Clinic, reports to Taylor
---Rex Croft, Medical Director of Fort Worth General Hospital



THE STORY:

1. Glove Girl works on the factory floor at a medical gloves manufacturing company called Lancaster-Webb. She is also a blogger.

2. The CEO, Will Somerset and Glove Girl are speaking at an industry conference -- in back-to-back time slots -- and she draws a bigger crowd.

3. Somerset was really not aware of what blogging was, or what bloggers were and now has a great deal of interest.

4. In a scene where his leadership team discusses Glove Girl on a conference call, they find out she has been blogging about the new product release before they would have liked to make it public, she has a positive effect on sales when she blogs about her favorite products at Lancaster-Webb, she blogs about her personal life, she has been critical of a prospective client , The Houston Clinic -- questioning whether it would be ethical to do business with them since they have a very high caesarean rate which she considers a negative -- and thereby risking the deal for her company.

5. On the conference call, members of the leadership team include: Judy Chen (PR) and Evan Jones (Marketing) and Jordan Longstreth (Legal).

6. Later it is revealed that the Houston Clinic's high caesarean rate is due to the fact that they are the premier hospital in a new caesarean procedure and have a long waiting list of mothers who want to give birth there and can be proud of their outstanding record.

7. Another customer, Rex Croft from Fort Worth General Hospital, gives Will Somerset, the CEO of Lancaster-Webb, this information about Houston Clinic's excellent reputation and asks if he will tell Glove Girl to post it. Somerset suspects telling any bloggers what to post or what NOT to post is a bad strategy.

8. Glove Girl finds out from the Head of Nursing that the ceasarian rate is a praise-worthy statistic and blogs about her mistaken notion that the Houston Clinic is in some way unethical, setting the record straight.

9. Toward the end of the piece, Croft praises Somerset about his great insights about using blogging at Lancaster-Webb and asks Somerset if he's willing to let Glove Girl go since he'd like to hire her away from them to set up a blog that creates customer intimacy for his own organization.

10. In the end, the questions are posed, do you keep Glove Girl, do you let her go, do you promote her, what's the best course of action?