I am finding the whole adoption debate about a 2.0 world wearisome. All these "Social Media Marketing Experts" with 40 Tweets and 12,000 followers - all those looking for ROI.
The premise for many is that if you can only use the tools - you will be there. Or that if you can only measure the tools, you will find the value.
OK let's go back and see if revolutions are about the tools or the mindset behind them.
It's 1940 - what do you see here and what did the French General Staff see?
A Tank right? This is a Char B. It was much better than nearly all the German tanks of the time.
But in reality this is what the French General Staff saw. They saw this as a mobile pill box that could be deployed as moving strong points with the infantry.
Now let's look at the Germans at the same time.
Here they are about to launch the first Blitzkrieg in Poland. These are Mk II's a vastly inferior tank to the Char B.
This is how the German General Staff really saw them and how they were used.
A raging but narrowly confined Torrent that would destroy and disrupt all in its path - it is an idea all about controlled chaos. Only the German Army with their highly devolved culture that pushed command down could cope with such an idea.
This idea was truly "disruptive". The actual tools were inferior to the opposition. Their context was superior.
2.0 has next to nothing to so with tools. It has everything to do with mindset.
This is why the measurement idea is so foolish. For what is the context for measurement? I bet it is all about pillboxes.
Last question: why did the Germans get it and not the rest of us? I think that the answer has two parts.
- Most importantly, the Germans lost WW I. The winners always have the challenge of hubris. The Losers can always examine their loss
- The underlying culture of the German Army is a paradox for the rest of us. The big joke we like to tell each other is that the German Army was all about following orders. But in reality, that was not true after the reforms of the 19th century. The opposite was the truth - huge discretion was pushed out to the field right down to the NCO. The French and American Army are massively controlled by culture. The Brits are somewhere in between.
Large previously successful organizations "won" the industrial wars. They did this by having tightly centralized command and control cultures.
So they are like the French in 1940 - two strikes against.
I think that we are wasting our time trying to get the "French" to get 2.0. They can't and they wont.
Find those who have
- Lost the industrial wars - why I picked Public Radio and TV
- Have a culture of pushing out/down power
