Gen Caldwell briefing on the death of Zarqawi

The Pitch, a Kansas City News source, recently covered Gen Caldwell’s efforts in “At Fort Leavenworth, officers are marching on a new target: the blogosphere”. While positive, the article concludes on a slightly sour note as it wonders if Caldwell’s social media push will disappear when he leaves.

General Caldwell will certainly move on and we expect he’ll bring his vision and commitment to social media with him. That’s a good thing – we can only hope to see this man spread his vision to new commands. But I certainly doubt that his commitment to the Social Web will soon disappear after any change in command. Caldwell left his mark in Iraq, pushing for increasingly sophisticated strategic communications, transparency and media engagement, and I’m certain his legacy will live on at CAC.

Most importantly, Caldwell’s legacy will live on in the minds and actions of the men and women who attended CAC courses and learned to appreciate and embrace the role of social media. Each of these hundreds of military leaders have and will continue to fan out across the military, spreading the use of social media and in turn encouraging  their peers, subordinates and senior leaders to do the same.

While General Caldwell has inspired and educated many future leaders and warriors, I’d like to highlight two key lessons from his career with respect to social media and the military.

Lesson 1: Transparency

Transparency, or as Caldwell would say in his four Be’s “Be Honest, Be Open, Be Relevant, and Be Ready” is a key foundation for engagement on the social web. During his time as spokesperson and Deputy Director of Strategic Effects in Iraq, Caldwell took several actions to ensure transparency. He had intelligence officers assigned to his command to quickly declassify information and make it available to reporters, bloggers and ultimately the global audience. Declassification is still a critical issue and smart military commanders must plan ahead of time to get influential information declassified and distributed in a coordinated manner. Caldwell also embraced reporters, often allowing them to travel with him under escort. Caldwell’s views and practice of strategic communication should serve as a model for all military leaders. Once arriving at CAC, Gen Caldwell published a policy memo on “Interactive Internet Activities” [.pdf] stating that military use of social media is an “essential  part of our responsibilities to provide information to the public” and then set in place the training and tools necessary to create a generation of military bloggers and social media enthusiasts. Well done general!

Lesson 2: Simple Blog Rules

At the Combined Arms Center, General Caldwell approved a set of simple blog rules (not guidelines) that provided clear direction to military bloggers. If your agency or command doesn’t have a set of rules, you may just want to borrow the set below:

1. Comments should be based on personal experiences unless documented by verifiable information
2. DO NOT divulge or discuss classified or sensitive information
3. DO NOT discuss planned or ongoing military operations or tactics, techniques and procedures that have not been officially and publically released already.
4. Entries should not contain profane or belittling commentary; constructive, intellectual criticism and debate is encouraged.
5. Entries are not to be used for commercial gain or promote or endorse financial or other interests.
6. Entries and discussions should not be political in a nature, contain political bias or be construed to advocate a political party.
7. All remarks made by military personnel MUST be fully attributable in accordance with CAC CG’s Polic Memo on Blogging