Brent Ashley reacted to my post on Jeremy:

Phil Windley, blogging CIO of the State of Utah, admires Jeremy Zawodny's sharing. I do too.

I've noticed with myself though, that my sharing-ness tends to rise and fall with my sense of security. When I've got lots of business and no worries, I'm a veritable sharing phenom, but my willingness to participate and to share has dropped considerably this year since I've been more interested in finding enough paying business to get by.

Brent makes a good point.  Blogging requires what is called an "abundance mentality."  If you don't approach it with the mental attitude that there's plenty to go around, you're less likely to share, which is at the heart of blogging.  The cynical side of me wonders if this might not be blogging's fatal flaw: it requires a fair amount of altruistic behavior. 

On the other hand, I've observed that having an abundance mentality is crucial to a high performance organization.  Leaders don't need to cultivate an abundance mentality to promote blogging, they need to promote an abundance mentality because that how you create an organization that works.  The lack of an abundance mentality leads to an organization that doesn't communicate, doesn't act like a team, and eventually doesn't accomplish very much. 

People without an abundance mentality spend a lot of their time at work angry at their boss, resentful of their co-workers, and feeling like every suggestion of change is an attack on them personally.  Many would say that the environment plays a role there and I whole-heartedly agree that we need to create work environments that foster an abundance mentality, but that doesn't remove the responsibility on each employee to ask themselves why they cash their pay check and whether they're part of the solution or part of the problem.