Military code generally demands that if a Private has something to say to a General… he/she has more than a few layers of COs to get through before his message gets to who he intends it to reach… if it does at all.
That is The Way it has always been… it is how the military works… well, perhaps that is changing.
The 4-star General commanding STRATCOM (US Nuclear Missile Strategic Command) has a blog… access is only on a need-to-access basis, you know, not for you and me anyway.
But… here is what he apparently had to say recently:
“The metric is what the person has to contribute, not the person’s rank, age, or level of experience. If they have the answer, I want the answer. When I post a question on my blog, I expect the person with the answer to post back. I do not expect the person with the answer to run it through you, your OIC, the branch chief, the exec, the Division Chief and then get the garbled answer back before he or she posts it for me. The Napoleonic Code and Netcentric Collaboration cannot exist in the same space and time. It’s YOUR job to make sure I get my answers and then if they get it wrong or they could have got it righter, then you guide them toward a better way…but do not get in their way.â€
JAMES E. CARTWRIGHT
General, USMC
Commander, USSTRATCOM
In non-mil-speak he just said that he would take a comment on his blog as an answer to his problem no matter who said it, no matter what rank they are.
That is a serious paradigm shift.
Is blogging changing the world?
Cheers:
As a former commander, I can assure you that’s how it has always been. Usually, though, a private can’t get to the general, or he has far too little info to make a decent contribution.