"Let soldiers blog, post to YouTube"

I don't know if Lt. Gen. Bill Caldwell is the first US Army three-star to say this but, with all that brass on his shoulders, he's got to be near the head of the line. Regardless, I reckon others will take notice.

In Changing the Organizational Culture, his article in Small Wars Journal, Caldwell writes that it's time for the Army to rethink its approach to the new media. Caldwell has some experience here: he was the person you saw in the Baghdad press conferences last year, speaking for the Multi-National Force [MNF, as he refers to it below]. Wherever you stand (or stood) on the war, what he's saying here bears reading, as he's proposing a new approach:

Recent experiences in Iraq illustrate how important it is to address cultural change and also how very difficult it is to change culture: After MNF-I broke through the bureaucratic red-tape and was able to start posting on YouTube, MNF-I videos from Iraq were among the top ten videos viewed on YouTube for weeks after their posting. These videos included gun tape videos showing the awesome power the US military can bring to bear. Using YouTube – part of the new media – proved to be an extremely effective tool in countering an adaptive enemy.

In a new and different world, one none of us was educated to reside in, we need new thinking in all areas. Next, I'd like to see General Caldwell blogging - or at least commenting on this post. My entreaties to him aside, the general goes on to list four areas where the Army should rethink its rules:

1. First, we need to Encourage Soldiers to “tell/share their story”...That is why we must encourage our Soldiers to interact with the media, to get onto blogs and to send their YouTube videos to their friends and family. When our Soldiers tell/share their stories, it has an overwhelmingly positive effect.
2. ...Leaders need to not only encourage but also Empower subordinates. A critical component of empowering is underwriting honest mistakes and failure. Soldiers are encouraged to take the initiative and calculated risk in the operational battlefield because we understand the importance of maintaining the offensive. However, once we move into the informational domain, we have a tendency to be zero defect and risk averse. Leaders have to understand and accept that not all media interactions are going to go well. Leaders need to assume risk in the information domain and allow subordinates the leeway to make mistakes.
3. Hand in hand with encouragement and empowerment is Education. If Soldiers are better educated to deal with new media and its effects, they will feel more empowered and be encouraged to act. We need to educate Soldiers on how to deal with the media and how their actions can have strategic implications. They need to know what the second and third order effects of their actions are. I believe that most people want to do a good job.
4. Finally, we need to Equip Soldiers to engage the new media. If we educate them and encourage them, we need to trust them enough to give them the tools to properly tell/share their stories. The experience of trying to gain YouTube access in Iraq and even back in the United States is a prime example. A suggestion for consideration might be equipping unit leaders with camcorders to document operations but also daily life.

NB: The title of this post is taken from a good article in govexec.com by Greg Grant.

Comments

[Paul Levy]

Wow, this is great stuff!

[Tom]

Thanks for posting this. I'll be sharing with civilian and military leaders at a client military hospital in the coming weeks and let you know their reactions. Based on my discussions with the project manager for the interactive patient entertainment/education system at this military hospital, the patients (the hospital staff call them warriors, btw) at military hospitals have some inspiring stories to tell and are avid users of social media including YouTube.

[jessica lipnack]

Tom, I'll look forward to your report. Is anyone blogging in the military hospitals? Any of their execs/officers in charge? Any "warriors?" Thanks so much.

[Marcelle Bastianello]

I find General Caldwell's comments amazing and refreshing. I feel like I'm in a continual conversation with individuals and groups stretching to understand how to use the new media in productive ways. I'm particularly glad to find that a general is to be counted in that number.

[Marcelle Bastianello]

Tom, thank you for your work at the VA. It is really important to carry this forward. And kudos to whoever has begun to refer to the veterans as "warriors" - so much more appropriate than "patients."

[Doug Cornelius]

I do not agree. I think the military is one of the few places where Web 2.0 / Enterprise 2.0 / social media paradigm is not appropriate.

The military relies on the chain of command and respect for the hierarchy to operate effectively, especially when lives of the soldiers and civilians is on the line. The web 2.0 paradigm flattens the structure and effectively allows anyone to say anything. That breaks down the chain of command.

The other issue is possibility of soldiers inadvertently revealing operational matters, operational history or location information that could expose information to combatants.

I think the military needs to evaluate its approach to social media. I think it is a struggle for them. (I think most companies are struggling with it.) They have some issues that we knowledge workers do not have.

[e-Patient Dave]

This seems like a great idea, but it's one with some built-in problems. I'd love to see the problems worked out.

First is the issue of whether *anyone* will be allowed to speak out, when you've got an environment that allows "free speech zones" and won't even let protesters within a mile of the President, as has happened during this administration (they weren't the first). Same for their policy of not allowing photos of coffins returning from Iraq. If the efforts of legitimate journalists are blocked, how much "diversity" do we think we'd get out of soldier blogs?

Look what happened to Gen. Shinseki when he got canned for telling the truth about troop requirements before the Iraq war.

But, on top of those political concerns, imagine if we were planning D-Day against Hitler, with the world's future at stake. Clearly there would be limits on what soldiers and officers were allowed to blog. (And note that different people have different opinions about when the world is at stake.)

So that brings me to ... does this really boil down to a new (and potentially effective) outlet for well-controlled propaganda? e.g., scare the enemy with real videos of our awesome firepower, but don't let anyone post "Dude, I was sent over here to hunt for yellowcake uranium, and we can't find ANYTHING, not a freakin' sign anywhere of WMD. Wussup wif dat??"

What's the difference between this and the Desert Storm videos of precision bombing ... which, by the way, rarely included the many laser-guided bombs that missed?

I don't know - just lots to think about. Seems to me there would need to be some very broad protections coupled with ironclad controls, which seems like a tall order to fill.

[jessica lipnack]

Wow. Turn your head the other way for a second as I have in the past couple of days and look what people have posted.

Doug, did you have a chance to read Gen. Caldwell's article in Small Wars Journal (the name of which, by the way, makes me want to do a post on that alone)? He makes a point there that I've heard numerous times from other chief executives: generally speaking, everyone knows the rules and they know when they're violating them. I'll never forget the then-CEO of Shell, Phil Carroll, talking about the need for "a few big rules" and that was it. I was also impressed with Caldwell's saying that the senior officers have to be willing to own the reality that junior people WILL make mistakes. And that the culture needs to be able to tolerate that. Giving away classified info is definitely out of bounds. Sharing some learning probably isn't. Those aren't the precise or even necessarily the correct ends of the spectrum but worth thinking about.

e-Dave: We have no way of knowing how Caldwell's remarks are being received internally in the Army but if I run into anything that is an indicator, I will share it. Probably because of the kinds of work Jeff and I do, we attract the Caldwell-types of the world, who are interested in more open, less hierarchical cultures, those that depend on the good thinking of people throughout the organizations. Wise executives know how to make decisions but more importantly they know how to listen through what one CEO-friend calls "the wall of noise." His view is that some of the very dim signals hold powerful truths. For as long as I've known him, he's had his ear to the wall.

[Steve Teicher]

In the mid-1980's I attended a unique executive education program taught 2 weeks a year in La Jolla, Calif., and the rest of the year online. The thesis of the founder was that he could attract stellar instructors if their participation were only 1 to 3 hours in person and then a month online later in the year. With this philosophy, instructors included folks like Najib Halaby, Dr. Jonas Salk, Geraldine Ferraro, Dr. Walter Roberts, etc. Maybe some recognize these people. I met Jessica and Jeff when they taught in the program. Students included people from industry and government including a number of General Officers. Apparently the Army Leadership was convinced that the way to improve command and control was to infuse computer knowledge into the ranks at every level. I talked to a brand new general who said he tried to postpone coming to the school as he was learning his new job. His boss told him, "Go to school first, then re-define your job." All this rapid communications clearly changes things. For one thing, telling the politically correct fib that is designed to paint the picture "that things are going our way" is much more difficult. Everyone will find out the bad stuff and if the command decision is to hide the truth, then count the microseconds until you are caught.

[e-Patient Dave]

> Everyone will find out the bad stuff
> and if the command decision is to hide the truth,
> then count the microseconds until you are caught.

But that's precisely my point: what if the truth is declared classified, for national security reasons? How do we police the possibility of some dork abusing the whole concept of classified information?

I still shiver when I think of the national security letters that were so Gestapo-like that you weren't even allowed to tell anyone you'd gotten one, and required no justification and weren't subject to judicial review. Are we putting an end to any such thing? Fine with me, but there are a lot of obstacles to get past.

Mind you, I love the idea of sunshine being the best cockroach repellent. But I keep wondering - who gets to say someone's a dork, and who gets to say a particular activity is abusive?

[Doug Cornelius]

I thought you would be interested in this Wired story about the Air Force blocking blogs:
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/02/air-force-banni.html