One of the findings in practically every recent study on social media is that in older companies cutting edge social media initiatives are sometimes harder to get off the ground because of the powerful muscle memory formed from years of success.  But, as many communicators in these companies undoubtedly know, the way we operate is changing and communicators at all levels of the corporate world find themselves fighting that muscle memory of broadcast-style push communications techniques.  Certainly this generalization doesn’t apply to every company; it may not even apply to most, but for some it seems a formidable challenge.

But support for the social media buy-in proposition is coming from an unlikely source … the U.S. Army.

A recent New York Times piece explored a new pilot program of wikis launched by the Army for developing a number of its field manuals.  These “rules of the road” documents were historically written by military thinkers at the various educational and training institutions across the country.  The pilot program allows for editing and adding content by any active soldier, from Private to General, using technology similar to Wikipedia while requiring that each entry be attributed to someone. Read the rest of this entry »