Command and management is about resolution making, the exercise of direction by a properly designated commander over assigned and connected forces in the accomplishment of a mission, and is supported by information expertise (the computers and communications part of C4I). Defence News items shoow that The United States is aggressively exploiting these applied sciences as a way to achieve info superiority, with the target of reaching higher and sooner choices, and continually projecting, albeit with uncertainties, future desired states and directing actions to bring about those future states.
Command and control refers back to the train of authority and course by a correctly designated commander over assigned and hooked up forces in the accomplishment of the mission. Command and management features are carried out by way of an arrangement of personnel, equipment, communications, facilities, 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 in the Armed Forces lawfully exercises over subordinates by virtue of rank or assignment. Command consists of the authority and duty for effectively utilizing obtainable assets and for planning the employment of, organizing, directing, coordinating, and controlling military forces for the accomplishment of assigned missions. Computing and communications are two pervasive enabling technologies that support C2 and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance. Computers and communications process and transport information.
Control is authority which may be less than full command exercised by a commander over a part of the actions of subordinate or different organizations. This is sometimes used in Close Air Support. Physical or psychological pressures exerted with the intent to assure that an agent or group will respond as directed. Intelligence is the product ensuing from the collection, processing, integration, analysis, evaluation, and interpretation of available info concerning foreign nations or areas. Data and information about an adversary obtained via remark, investigation, analysis, or understanding.
One vital functionality that C4I programs present commanders is situational consciousness–information about the situation and status of enemy and pleasant forces. A vital element of achieving superiority in determination making, it does not alone guarantee superior resolution making. Commanders should take related data and mix it with their judgment–including tough-to-quantify facets of human habits (comparable to fatigue, expertise stage, and stress), the uncertainty of knowledge, and the plausible future states resulting from actions by both their own pressure and the enemy–to make decisions about future actions and find out how to convey those decisions in ways to facilitate their proper execution. In doing so, commanders are supported by tools to allow and speed up the planning and decision-making course of, to attain the choice-making superiority envisioned by DOD.
And, in fact, to be effective, command selections have to be applied, a process to which C4I technologies are additionally relevant (e.g., in rushing up the hyperlink through which focusing on info is passed to weapons, the so-known as sensor-to-shooter hyperlink). The event and use of the correct tools allow the commander to focus better on those points related to the essence of command–the art versus the science. As more and better-automated instruments are developed and individuals are trained to make use of them, it will become much more necessary to acknowledge the art of command as distinguished from the mechanics of the instruments used to offer information.
Military Intelligence has taught us that 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 Umuc. While flexibility is important in this new leadership model, it should not be interpreted as weakness.
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 leadership as drawing people and disparate parts of the organisation together in ways that makes individuals and the organisation more effective.
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