Today’s large-company executives are going to learn a harsh lesson all over again. And they will, like generations before them, waste the lessons of history and become Lost Boys.

You want these guys putting your company on the web?

Let me refresh your memory of J.M. Barrie’s play Peter Pan. The Lost Boys are those who were misplaced by their nannies, and, having gone unclaimed for seven days, were transported to Neverland to live with Peter Pan, the eternal child. There is a generation of senior executives all over the world I characterize as “Lost Boys” (Editor’s note: In Peter Pan, there are no “lost girls” because girls are too clever to be lost.) They lack understanding of social media, and unless they come to trust someone who is “switched on,” they leave a very difficult task to the next executive.

They run companies that are willing to settle for three percent growth rather than invest in disruptive technologies that comprise “emerging growth companies.” Many examples of this are cited by Harvard professor Clayton Christensen in his classic book The Innovator’s Dilemma. One example he cites is fixed-line telephony vs. cellular phones. In particular, many executives have yet to comprehend the concept of social business.

While I have been pushing this for a while, today’s post acknowledges that an awakening happened today thanks to an interesting blog post by David Armano (@armano) and a daring leap in a company web site by The Dachis Group. They are taking social business to a new level on their own site. It’s a great experiment, and I’ll message them privately about emphasizing transparency over utility. I take issue with the fact that they actually try to make the point of transparency of logging in real time who they are e-mailing but do less to illustrate the value of social media culture and thinking than they should.

What this teaches is that if you don’t integrate social media into your corporate culture and encourage experimentation and use, the next generation of executives will have the awful task of undoing what you’ve done. There are so many applications for social media platforms that I won’t list them here. Instead, I’ll refer you to a post by Michael Kahn, “A Dozen Applications for Social Media.”

In 1995, I had this vision of a digital future for marketers and got rebuffed by the last generation of Lost Boys. Their attitude was, “We have Yellow Pages advertising, so why would we need a web site?” Fourteen years later, their attitude seems to be, “We can’t let go of control.” I’m a realist, and I understand that no major corporation is going to change overnight. But every major corporation now pays painstaking attention to its web site. They have brought development inside their organizations.

So, what’s next? This is a classic adoption puzzle. If you’re a senior executive, then read some blogs, search for references to your company on Twitter, and invite your PR firm to give you an executive briefing about social media. Then, authorize an experiment. Pick someone from two generations behind you, and let them recommend some ideas to you. You can even have them select from any of the dozen applications in Kahn’s post.

When you get your executive briefing, don’t let anyone tell you that they can do it for you. Yes, there are pure-play social media shops, but they haven’t demonstrated any ability to really understand how to bridge old and new at a pace other than, well, breakneck. Social media is not marketing is not digital integration. Twitter and Facebook are not the universe of social media. And there are differences between platforms and applications. The best thing any firm with social media expertise can offer you is:

1. training
2. strategy
3. guidance

If your organization is not evolving into a social business, then you will become a Lost Boy, destined to live as an eternal child and missing out on the education of a lifetime, care of the people who give you money or make you money.