How Applying Command And Control Leadership Enhances Victory

Command and control is about decision making, the exercise of path by a properly designated commander over assigned and attached forces within the accomplishment of a mission, and is supported by info know-how (the computers and communications part of C4I). The United States is aggressively exploiting these applied sciences with a view to obtain information superiority, with the objective of reaching better and quicker selections, and frequently projecting, albeit with Defence uncertainties, future desired states and directing actions to bring about these future states.

Command and management refers to the exercise of authority and route by a correctly designated commander over assigned and connected forces within the accomplishment of the mission. Command and control functions are carried out through an association of personnel, tools, communications, services, and procedures employed by a commander in planning, directing, coordinating, and controlling forces and operations in the accomplishment of the mission.

Command refers back to the authority that a commander within the Armed Forces lawfully workouts over subordinates by virtue of rank or assignment. Command contains the authority and accountability for effectively utilizing accessible

resources and for planning the employment of, organizing, directing, coordinating, and controlling navy forces for the accomplishment of assigned missions.

Computing and communications are two pervasive enabling applied sciences that assist C2 and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. Computer systems and communications process and transport information.

Management is authority which can be less than full command exercised by a commander in a Defence Forum over a part of the actions of subordinate or other organizations. Bodily or psychological pressures exerted with the intent to assure that an agent or group will reply as directed.

Intelligence is the product ensuing from the gathering, processing, integration, evaluation, analysis, and interpretation of available data regarding overseas nations or areas. Data and knowledge about an adversary obtained by means of observation, investigation, evaluation, or understanding.

One necessary capability that C4I methods provide commanders is situational awareness--details about the placement and standing of enemy and pleasant forces. A mandatory component of attaining superiority in decision making, it doesn't alone assure superior determination making. Commanders should take related information and combine it with their judgment--including tough-to-quantify points of human behavior (such as fatigue, experience degree, and stress), the uncertainty of information, and the believable future states resulting from actions by each their very own force and the enemy--to make choices about future actions and easy methods to convey these selections in methods to facilitate their proper execution. In doing so, commanders are supported by instruments to allow and speed up the planning and determination-making course of, to attain the decision-making superiority envisioned by DOD.

And, of course, to be efficient, command decisions should be applied, a process to which C4I applied sciences are also relevant (e.g., in rushing up the link by way of which concentrating on data is passed to weapons, the so-referred to as sensor-to-shooter hyperlink). The development and use of the best instruments allow the commander to focus better on these issues associated with the essence of command--the artwork versus the science. As more and higher-automated tools are developed and persons are trained to make use of them, it should turn into much more vital to acknowledge the art of command as distinguished from the mechanics of the instruments used to provide information. More information at the Air Force Portal
on this subject.

Leadership was once about hard skills such as planning, finance and business analysis. When command and control ruled the corporate world, the leaders were heroic rationalists who moved people around like pawns and fought like stags. When they spoke, the company employees jumped. Now, if the gurus and experts are right, leadership is increasingly concerned with soft skills - teamwork, communication and motivation.

Some suggest that we expect too much of leaders. Indeed, "renaissance" men and women are rare. Leadership in a modern organisation is highly complex and it is increasingly difficult - sometimes impossible - to find all the necessary traits in a single person. Among the most crucial skills is the ability to capture your audience - you will be competing with lots of other people for their attention. Leaders of the future will also have to be emotionally efficient. They will promote variation rather than promoting people in their own likeness. They will encourage experimentation and enable people to learn from failure. They will build and develop people.

Is it too much to expect of one person? I think it probably is: In the future, we will see leadership groups rather than individual leaders. This change in emphasis from individuals towards groups was charted by the leadership guru Warren Bennis in his work "Organizing Genius" He concentrates on famous ground-breaking groups rather than individual leaders and focuses, for example, on the achievements of Xerox's Palo Alto Research Centre, the group behind the 1992 Clinton campaign, and the Manhattan Project which delivered the atomic bomb. "None of us is as smart as all of us", says Professor Bennis.

If they are adept at hard skills, they surround themselves with people who are proficient with soft skills. They strike a balance. The two most lauded corporate chiefs of the past decade, Percy Barnevik, of Asea Brown Boveri, and Jack Welch, of General Electric, dismantled bureaucratic structures using both soft and hard skills. They coach and cajole as well as command and control. The "leader as coach" is yet another phrase more often seen in business books than in the real world. Acting as a coach to a colleague is not something that comes easily to many executives. It is increasingly common for executives to need mentoring. They need to talk through decisions and to think through the impact of their behaviour on others in the organisation.

In the macho era, support was for failures, but now there is a growing realisation that leaders are human after all, and that leadership is as much a human art as a rational science. Today's leaders don't follow rigid role models but prefer to nurture their own leadership style. They do not do people's jobs for them or put their faith in developing a personality cult. They regard Berkley
leadership as drawing people and disparate parts of the organisation together in ways that makes individuals and the organisation more effective.