Digital Chief

Future Imperfect

Digital Chief — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 12:30:30 +0000

I had the pleasure of guest blogging for Influence Solutions as the Digital Chief,

When we look at the effects of technology on the future of our militaries we should remember that the past has shown that early adopters and pop media pundits will suffer from optimism bias and exaggerated both the pace and pervasiveness of changes in our society. For our part, our perceptions of the future will be shaped by military cultural and our risk adverse hierarchical environment. History has also shown there are no revolutionary technological changes, just the rapid evolution of those that exist.

to read more at Influence Solutions

Education: The Ultimate Social Influencer

Digital Chief — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 15:52:50 +0000

The ultimate social influencer is education, it affects how we deal with new situations under pressure, understand our place in the world and interpret the commanders intent. The ability to connect and enable our members to access academic and professional development opportunities enhances critical thinking skills and broadens both their professional and personal knowledge. Social media and other emergent social technologies are perfect fit to military learning, allowing the brick school house to move to the student reducing time away from family and allowing professional development to continue when deployed.

The use of social media and other collaborative technologies as a delivery platform for military education is disruptive to many of the long standing military instruction traditions. We have for the most part a of “stand and deliver” format of instruction where the professional instructor delivers all content in a precision that emulates the disciple and hierarchal lifestyle of our chosen career.

Social Media brings a level of mobility, flexibility that allows military learners to engage in education when op tempo and personal lives permit. Social media allows rich engaging content to be delivered to service members in the white spaces of their lives between the high ops tempo and responsibilities that come with a balanced lifestyle. Service members can tailor their learning time to suit their particular situation resulting in better engagement and personal satisfaction.

Social Media and other social learning tools also offer a rich immersive environment in which to learn, where collaboration is encouraged and peer to peer mentorship ensure that learning is a satisfying and positive experience. The ability to form online communities where the students, instructors and mentors can participate long after the course is finished, helps develop a culture of career long learning.

Just as the military modernizes it operational equipment, professional education must also take advantage of new learning opportunities and technologies. For a military to professionally represent the wishes of it’s government and meet the expectations society, it must be well trained and educated. Social Media brings the ability to deliver that training and education to the right person, at the right time, in the right place and that is a force multiplier.

Tagged: #smgov, 2.0, 2.0 gov, air force, C2, community building, comprehensive approach, digital chief, enterprise 2, futurist, innovation, knowledge network, learning commons, Lessons learned, productivity, social learning, social media, social networking, web 2.0

10 Things I Want to Share With You

Digital Chief — Sat, 09 Oct 2010 02:06:50 +0000

A few days ago I started a discussion with a friend who did not see any benefit to Social Media, our discussion ranged from leadership, security and what constitutes personal space. Mostly we talked about why anyone would give away the proprietary data in their mind. When I looked back over our email (yes email, it’s a more personal form of communication) I found these 10 key points that best described my views on sharing. And I thought I would share them with you, and get your reaction..

You have solutions to someone else’s problem. It’s just that the both of you don’t know it yet
I don’t think we have evolved not to share, to not communicate and to horde our info in personal drives
Eureka’s don’t happen in lonely cubicles, they happen in crowds fed by social interaction
The future is already here we just haven’t assembled the pieces yet
Knowledge is not power, it’s liberation
If we don’t share we are doomed to always find the same right answer
When was the last time you had your eureka on
When was the last time you had the serendipitous moment of learning
When was the last time you had the joy of watching someone have that eureka moment because of something you shared
Staying curious keeps you from being obsolete

Tagged: 2.0, collaboration, community building, comprehensive approach, enterprise 2, future casting, futurist, innovation, interagency, knowledge network, learning commons, Lessons learned, military, productivity, social learning, social media, social networking, web 2.0, whole of government

Bringing the Social Web to You One Brain at a Time

Digital Chief — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 03:29:56 +0000

It’s not really any secret that I’m an advocate of social media within the military. While on the surface that is true, my dark secret is I really want to remove people from organizational stovepipes and connect them in a social web. The 21^st century will bring problems to our door step faster and with more frequency than ever before. The interconnectiveness of global cultures and opinions will require government departments and militaries to work together in a comprehensive manner to source solutions to problems affecting our world. It is both at the personal and organizational level where the changes need to be made, adopting social technologies only enables the behavior not cultivates it. No software guarantees that tacit knowledge from experienced and skilled employees will be willingly transferred to new ones. The use of social learning and web based technologies to share and learn is more culturally driven than tool driven. To make the shift to a culture of sharing and collaborative learning, people must be inspired to find new information, as well as share their data openly. This shift in culture must start at the top, leaders at all levels must be the early adopters, demonstrating an environment where collaboration is not only encouraged but expected and if necessary enforced. The successes and the benefits of collaboration must be made evident and avenues for old practices removed. While the use of social technologies does not destroy the leadership model it does cause disruption of many long standing ideas and traditional touch stones. As social technologies become successful, ideas and people will be interact in new and exciting ways, the resulting opportunities will require security policies to be rebalanced, to enable this new flow of ideas. It will be from these connection; people, ideas and possibilities that innovative solutions spring forth and it must be the people and not technology that drive any social technology strategy. Modernization or knowledge networks need to describe how we want our people to interact and share, not what the technology will do for us. We shouldn’t talk about the “systems of systems”, when should be talking about the “connection of communities”. We need to makes our silos transparent and encourage worker curiosity do the rest, but most importantly we need to cultivate a culture that rewards sharing.

The military has the ideas, talent and energy to be the leaders in the field of social technology, we just need to plug every one into the network and let their natural talents flow.

After all “Leadership is about people and communication and coincidentally so is Social Media”

Tagged: #smgov, 2.0, collaboration, community building, comprehensive approach, digital chief, enterprise 2, futurist, innovation, knowledge network, learning commons, military, productivity, social media, social networking, social web, web 2.0, whole of government

The way of ideas

Digital Chief — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 17:10:44 +0000

Make free time in your day for ideas

Encourage big ideas and far reaching plans… accept failure and take risks

Record your ideas somewhere, refer to them and piggy back off them.. share your ideas

Don’t accept the same right answer, make yourself find new right answers, stay curious

Encourage problem solving, not rule following

Seek out informed feedback

Make your plans evergreen, Keep it fresh

Don’t stovepipe teams mix them up.. celebrate change

Bring in guest team members and listen to them

Tagged: 2.0, brainstorming, collaboration, community building, digital chief, enterprise 2, futurist, ideas, innovation, knowledge network, learning commons, open source, productivity, social media, social networking, web 2.0

New Job and New Role

Digital Chief — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 14:05:53 +0000

Well here I am, in my new job an the Canadian Defence Academy, where my function in life is to design, improve and consolidate all the education opportunities for NCM’s in to a diploma program. It should be an interesting journey. I’ve never had a desire to pursue secondary education or been comfortable with the concept of academic education as it is now constructed. I have always viewed it as a “self licking ice cream cone” and in dire need of a shake-up. That all being said I still look forward to the project. I firmly believe that the NCMs of Canadian Forces are both smart, well trained and have gathered enough knowledge along the way in their careers to warrant being fairly recognized by academia. This program has the potential to benefit both the member and the service if constructed correctly. The diploma program will give the member the skills and paper recognition for their accumulated knowledge and set them on track for employment opportunities post service. We will gain in the service a NCM who has both the professional technical skill sets and the rounded liberal arts knowledge to provide a strong foundation for the strategic understanding required to operate in the battlescape of the 21st century..

That’s the plan anyways.. I will keep you up to date on my journey.

The Digital chief is now on Status.net

Digital Chief — Sun, 02 May 2010 20:40:15 +0000

If you like to talk about Social Media and the military or government join me online . I’ve setup a private open source microblogging site thanks to status.net. Check it out, a great social alternative to twitter to carry on the conversation. see ya there!

Social Media for the Military conference

Digital Chief — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 22:03:03 +0000

The theme “Social Media as a Force Multiplier” was not chosen to denote the emergent social technologies as Kinetic tools. It was selected to give latitude to the presenters, speakers and participants to look at every line of operation and think about how social media and the encompassing internet technologies can be used to make our daily jobs both more satisfying and effective.

The theme should challenge us to look into the future and explore how emergent social technologies and shifting cultural norms will affect how we will use, perceive and adapt to new social attitudes.

Social media can also have a negative impact on some military actives and we need to discuss those as well and give voice to the many concerns that surround social media. By hosting a social media forum specifically for military and defence employees we can discuss the unique concerns as well as the opportunities that social media can bring to the military family. Just as social media knows no boundaries, I hope the participants, speakers and industry leaders will be representative of the diverse military community and bring equally diverse experiences and understanding of the potentials of social media.

The theme is flexible and I am actively looking for co sponsers to help organize and promote the event, so you have a chance to shape the conference and help recommend presenters. So if you want to present, attend or suggest someone who should, sound off on our facebook page. If your organization needs an official invitation via message or you want to represent a company or industry contact me via the information found on the facebook page.

Contact

Postoffice@ralphmercer.ca

Ralph.mercer@forces.cg.ca

http://facebook.com/smformil

Tagged: #smgov, 2.0, 2.0 gov, air force, collaboration, community building, conference, digital chief, enterprise 2, future casting, futurist, gov, innovation, interagency, IO, knowledge network, learning commons, Lessons learned, mass communication, military, network, open source, productivity, public relations, social media, social networking, web 2.0

The Comprehensive Approach

Digital Chief — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 02:31:16 +0000

I attended the “Canadian Perspective on the Comprehensive Approach” symposium at Queens University today and few things really struck me. First of all, not one of speakers talked about use of emergent social technologies to improve interagency communication and tools for the development of common operating picture. Now that in itself is not surprising as all the organizations represented come from hierarchical risk adverse organization that view open communications as a threat. But what really bothered me was that the risk adverse culture and resistance to change was making itself felt in all facets of the discussions.

Now to be fair, all the speakers talked about how the comprehensive approach is the answer and when they used it properly it enhanced their operations. The underling theme was that the comprehensive approach is a great concept as long as it worked in their favor and they were the lead agency. Everyone claimed they needed to exercise the comprehensive approach with other agencies more often and they should all train together to ensure everyone understood each other better. It all had the same sincerity as when you meet that long lost high school classmate and you both agree to meet for a coffee sometime to discuss old times. you go away knowing it’s not happening and pleased with yourself because it was a the polite thing to do.

It was clear everyone sensed they needed to change as they spoke but were stuck in 1.0 thinking, proprietary operating concepts doing the bare minimum to be interoperable. Transparency was only achieved under duress and never the default position. Cultural differences, stereotyping and inter agency prejudices prevent change from taking a foot hold within the organizational culture. We need to start using open 2.0 thinking, making transparency the default position. We need common operating principles would guarantee that all energies and intellectual capital would be spent on success of the mission rather than thwarting competitive agencies.

So how do we get there? It takes one person, just one, to take that leap of faith and say “I’m going to change this”. To do rather than talk about it, to invest physical rather than intellectual capital. To host that first interagency doctrine session, to use that doctrine during training and openly sharing the lessons learned from it. Actions that will build the necessary trust and social credibility to ignite the chain reaction of cooperation. Bottom line we need 2.0 thinking to solve 2.0 problems, there really is no excuse.

Tagged: #smgov, 2.0, 2.0 gov, collaboration, comprehensive approach, digital chief, enterprise 2, future casting, futurist, government, innovation, interagency, knowledge network, learning commons, productivity, social learning, social networking, web 2.0, whole of government

Social Media for Military Fan Page

Digital Chief — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 12:55:39 +0000

If you are interested in promoting the use of Social Media in the Military, please join this fan book page. One of the goals is to organize a SM for Mil conference to held some time in the fall.

Facebook link http://www.facebook.com/SMforMil

Tagged: #smgov, 2.0, 2.0 gov, air force, collaboration, community building, CWO, digital chief, enterprise 2, future casting, futurist, innovation, knowledge network, learning commons, military, open source, productivity, social media, social networking