The Command and Control - Emerging Effects Framework: An Overview

Abstract

The Command and Control – Emerging Effects (C2E2) framework describes a military force in an ecology of conflict and cooperation. The force’s actions impact others, generating effects in a co-evolutionary process of emergent behavior patterns. The military force uses problem-focused processes to identify, solve, and implement its chosen solutions. Its organizational logic is the force-wide logic of its domain-specific, problem-focused processes. Its organizational architecture comprises the organizational logic with specifications for each logical task, roles for performing both manpower and technical tasks, incentives and coordination mechanisms, and structuring of tasks and roles into organizational units. Assigning resources (personnel and technical systems) to these roles and adjusting for role maladaptations requires control-coordination processes. These control-coordination processes, the science of C2, provide an infrastructure, (a “surface”) on which the command process (the art of C2) operates. The command process involves a dialogue of deciding, leading, and interpreting among the commanders in the chain of command. The interactions engendered by the dialogue generate force- wide sensemaking processes and action capabilities that are the means for evolutionary adaptation to the ecology. The capability employs the adoption of a strategic posture and an operating point in the space of strategic fitness dimensions (edges).