Understanding Command and Control Teams Operating in Complex Environments

Teams are becoming increasingly common within organizations.i¾ i¾ Furthermore, the risk of a breakdown in teamwork is often amplified within dynamic environments.i¾ i¾ As such, a great deal of research has been conducted in an effort to understand the knowledge, skills, and attitudes required by teams operating in highly complex environments such as that of command-and-control teams.i¾ i¾ Although much is known, relatively little of this theoretical information has been translated into practical guidelines for practitioners.i¾ i¾ The purpose of this paper is to use the literature on team decision-making under stress to extract key principles related to effective command-and-control teams.i¾ i¾ In addition, several challenges related to the increased use of distributed command-and-control teams are addressed.