The social general

Jessica Lipnack — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 05:30:09 -0800

Last month, blogger Frontier 6 posted a thoughtful essay on the Small Wars Journal blog: The Army needs to come into the 21st-century, he wrote, and it can do so without opening its checkbook. All US Army soldiers should be able to blog and post to YouTube. Embrace the new media, he said, to those in power. Encourage people to take risks; don't punish when they fail.

It's solid Web 2.0 thinking. No biggie. Just another blogger with ideas.

But blogger Frontier 6 is Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, commander of the Army's Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. He occupies General Petraeus's last position before assuming duties in Iraq.

Lt. Gen. Caldwell's plea to open up communication runs counter to recent directives from the "Institutional Army" (insiders' term). Regulations issued last spring by the Department of the Army require soldiers to "consult" their immediate superiors before posting to a public site (i.e., blogs, YouTube). In other words, soldiers can't take advantage of the massive power of Web 2.0 -- which their enemies use all the time -- without someone okaying it.

This month, Caldwell releases the Army's first new operations manual since 9/11. The new Field Manual (the Army's 15th) puts rebuilding infrastructure and services in war zones on the same scale as fighting. Assuming that the US will be in "persistent conflict" for years to come (please, no!), the manual says "nation-building" is equal to the Army's fundamental purpose, fighting. Caldwell calls it a "blueprint to operate over the next 10 to 15 years." It's so different from the July, 2001, version that last Friday, February 8, The New York Times gave it above-the-fold, Page One treatment.

In November, 2007 -- and with five minutes notice -- I found myself two seats from General Caldwell on a raised platform at an Army knowledge management conference.

One colonel spoke, another followed, and then the retired general sitting next to Caldwell passed me the microphone. I pointed to my head, said I wished I could download my brain, specifically mentioned blogging, mumbled something about all of us needing to really collaborate more than ever.

On that panel, Caldwell talked about the great generational divide between his own colleagues and those on the front lines. He said he'd been in the Army 14 years before seeing combat, that new recruits see war in a fraction of that time. They'd grown up differently, he said.

All of our institutions are attempting to bridge the same divide as the Army -- young people who get it, superiors who don't, and policies that lag far behind. But some at the top who do get it also know how to orienteer in institutional terrains foreign to their younger colleagues. Both sides need the other.

Meanwhile, at least a few in the Army may be ahead of their non-military counterparts in experimenting in the new digital world. Blog on, Frontier 6, right alongside your soldiers.

And if he can, how about you, CEOs, and what about encouraging your folks to blog too?

--Jessica Lipnack, CEO of NetAge, blogs at Endless Knots.

The social general

Jessica Lipnack — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 05:30:09 -0800

It's solid Web 2.0 thinking. No biggie. Just another blogger with ideas.

In November, 2007 -- and with five minutes notice -- I found myself two seats from General Caldwell on a raised platform at an Army knowledge management conference.

Meanwhile, at least a few in the Army may be ahead of their non-military counterparts in experimenting in the new digital world. Blog on, Frontier 6, right alongside your soldiers.

And if he can, how about you, CEOs, and what about encouraging your folks to blog too?

--Jessica Lipnack, CEO of NetAge, blogs at Endless Knots.

The social general

Jessica Lipnack — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 05:30:09 -0800

It's solid Web 2.0 thinking. No biggie. Just another blogger with ideas.

In November, 2007 -- and with five minutes notice -- I found myself two seats from General Caldwell on a raised platform at an Army knowledge management conference.

Meanwhile, at least a few in the Army may be ahead of their non-military counterparts in experimenting in the new digital world. Blog on, Frontier 6, right alongside your soldiers.

And if he can, how about you, CEOs, and what about encouraging your folks to blog too?

--Jessica Lipnack, CEO of NetAge, blogs at Endless Knots.