Tactics, command, leadership

(Axel Boer) #1

  • increased capacity for independent management at all levels
    in the organisation.

  • increased delegation,

  • well defined tasks for the units in the organisation,

  • good cooperation between subordinate units, and

  • limitation of continual follow­up.


A commander’s capacity to manage many directly subordinate
commanders is also governed by their competence, their use of
language and the time scales they are working with. If the supe-
rior feels that the subordinate commanders, as a group, are wor-
king with similar time scales and handling problems of similar
type and size, he or she can increase his or her span­of­control. A
maximum value for span of control in a particular situation can-
not though be stipulated as so many variables are involved.
Decision domains can, in practical terms, be based on sectors, an
incident site being organised through division into such sectors.
Sectors can be based on the need to complete a certain type of
task or maintain a particular function, such as water supply or
the decontamination of personnel and victims. They can also be
based on geographic division of an incident site, for example in-
side, outside, roof, north side or between the lake and the road to
the east of the lake. These forms can also be combined within the
framework of a single emergency response operation, which is
perhaps the most common. The formation of sectors is one way of
increasing command capacity in the system, through distributing
certain tasks or responsibility to different individuals.
For the decision domains system command and operational
command, command capacity can be increased by providing staff.
In the case of decision domain task command, the command ca-
pacity can be increased in several ways. A common way is to in-
crease the number of decision makers and through this divide the
decision domain task command into several decision domains.
Task command can then be handled in different degrees of reso-
lution. Different organisations work under different conditions
which place a variety of demands on the organisations and make
it necessary for them to develop a work method based on these
conditions. Role logic comes into play here and the scaling up of
operations must occur on the basis of this.

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