The Admiral is the US Chief of Naval Operations and he gave these remarks to a Public Relations Strategic Communications Summit in June.
The general message is that the US Navy realised it could no longer afford not to participate in social media despite potential security risks and the challenges of a "dizzying" communications environment.
The speech marks a significant departure from the guidance in the US Navy’s social media handbook issued last year.
The 2010 manual discouraged Navy leaders from allowing too many individual units to set up social media accounts and urged commanders to establish a single "command presence".
In this speech, Adm. Roughead instead argues that the Navy’s leaders need to understand that they command a "workforce of communicators".
He emphasised a transparent approach so that Navy leaders could listen to their subordinates and connect with the communities they were serving.
The Admiral cited the response to the earthquake and Tsunami in Japan as an example of how local commands could provide speedy updates on the crisis situation and reply to questions from the United States.
He recognised, however, that the Navy has "only recently started to come to terms with the demand for radical transparency."
The full speech is available here, but a few other sentences that I think are worth picking out:
1. "For whether we embrace the fundamental communications changes underway today or not, our talented young workforce not only embraces them, they know nothing else. As leaders, then, it’s not enough that we keep pace with these changes – we must lead the change."
]]>2. "I submit to you that in today’s media environment, as leaders – whether we recognize it or not – we are no longer simply leading a workforce of employees or, in my case, Sailors. We are leading a workforce of communicators."
3. "…it soon became clear to me that opting out [of engaging in social media] neither guaranteed security, nor served our interests in transparency, outreach, and advocacy. Rather than consider whether we could afford to participate, we came to the conclusion that we couldn’t afford not to participate."
4. "So we joined that conversation, and the term that I’ve used is, “we’re burning the boats.” There’s no going back. We’re committed irreversibly, and in the end it was one of the easiest decisions I’ve made as the Chief of Naval Operations."
In particular, the MoD will decide whether to free deployed commanders from aspects of existing constraints which mean their operations are usually communicated through spokespeople.
A more decentralised approach is arguably overdue but not without risk both in terms of operations security and potential political fall out which may limit the impact of any changes.
The recommendations recognise that greater trust within the organisation needs to be built on the basis of training and the development of doctrine.
By giving staff media training and providing them with a sound understanding of the rationale behind operations, it is hoped the MoD will ‘set the music’ centrally but that their staff will be allowed ‘to find the right notes’.
The risk of empowering more communicators would be offset by discipline to a "guiding narrative".
At the moment, members of the Armed Forces and civil servants have to obtain prior permission to communicate in public through the chain of command.
This hierarchical approval process is proving cumbersome in an age of instant digital communication.
A more decentralised approach to communication was a key aspect of a recent Joint Doctrine Note on Strategic Communication issued in March this year.
"Our processes and philosophy must allow us to respond to feedback from audiences and to counter narratives from our adversaries in order to stay ahead in the information environment. This will require us to decentralise some of our communication activities."
The proposals are still under review.
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