By Tom Collins
In today's emails I received two contrasting reports: a BtoB Magazine article entitled 'Fortune' 500 slow to adopt blogs as communication tools and a KMgov-list message linking to a new DoD study, Social Software and National Security: An Initial Net Assessment.
It may seem hard to believe, but it looks like business has a lot to learn from our military thinkers. The DoD study comes from Drs. Mark Drapeau and Linton Wells II at the National Defense University.
Their executive summary offers the following rationale for why engaging in social media has become essential to national security:
"Social software, if deployed, trained on, monitored, managed, and utilized properly, is expected to yield numerous advantages: improve understanding of how others use the software, unlock self-organizing capabilities within the government, promote networking and collaboration with groups outside the government, speed decisionmaking, and increase agility and adaptability.
"Along with the accrual of positive benefits, incorporating social software into day-to-day work practices should also decrease the probability of being shocked, surprised, or out-maneuvered. ... [E]xperimenting with and understanding social software will increase USG abilities to deal with complex, new challenges.
"Because social software can add significant value to many ongoing missions, and because citizens, allies, and opponents will use it regardless, this paper recommends that national security institutions, particularly DOD, embrace its responsible usage. While the focus of this paper is on USG national security institutions, many of the conclusions apply to government generally — what many people call “e-Government” or “Government 2.0” ...
(Emphasis added.)
But here's the killer quote that I've been harping on forever: After describing the use of Twitter by the State Department during the recent coup in Madagascar to dispel rumors that the deposed president was hiding in the U.S. Embassy in an effort to avoid having the opposition attack, the report explained that this capacity to respond in a crisis,
"occurred only because that agency was experimenting with the social tools before they 'needed' them."
(Empahsis added.) Dig the freakin' well, before you need the water!
How much damage could Dominos have avoided by applying that wisdom a year ago, instead of scrambling to set up its Twitter account after the video hit YouTube?
There's a lot more to study and digest in this paper, including eleven specific recommendations for engagement in social media by government agencies ... and some nifty diagrams (you know I love those things) attempting to visualize concepts like the relationship between ROI (return on investment) and ROE (return on engagement).
What can your business learn from the DoD — before your next crisis arises.
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