Military Personnel Make Great Assets in the Business World Essay Example

Communication is a fundamental component in the efficient running of daily operations in any military organization or company. Good communication has been proven to be an essential cog for the normal functioning of an organization. It ensures that managers perform their tasks diligently and is the cornerstone of planning. Proper organization skills, facilitation of the socializing process, and a basis for motivation and acquiring of information can be traced back to effective communication. Military and business organizations have a similarity in that communication is a backbone that determines failure or success when running operations, coupled with other factors such as finances and infrastructure.

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Taking a look back at previous centuries, communicating a message entailed a person physically traveling to a destination and delivering the message again. The earliest military communications required runners or the use of enciphered signals and a proponent of this system were the Romans. Drums, horns, and horseback riders were used to transmit messages before the adoption of radio communication in the 20th century. Present-age military forces use sophisticated communication devices and techniques, and the range has increased significantly. Majority of modern communication equipment are designed to withstand harsh climatic conditions and encrypt and decode transmissions (Crowley and Heyer, 2015). Computers and technology, in general, have transformed the warfare scene and use of gadgets such as unmanned drones, heat-seeking missiles, modified fighter jets, night vision, and thermal cameras have formed the new frontier in the military world.

There are six categories of military communications namely: warning systems, armed forces broadcast channels, cryptography, central network warfare, nuclear command directive, and the signal corps. The warning method is a diverse state of alertness or preparedness for the disciplined forces used worldwide in the course of a war, terrorist acts, or an assault against a state. They go by various initials like DEFCON, or defense readiness condition adopted by the United States Armed Forces. Cryptography is an analysis of procedures of modifying messages to a format that is inscrutable except to the one who knows decryption (Rahmat-Samii and Densmore 2015, p 1192). It was a significant milestone in the age where radio systems were easily tapped. Cryptographic software also has widespread usage in private businesses.

If communication can be tedious between people, it is even harder between individuals in companies. The communicator has an idea that they want to express, and for proper comprehension, it has to be in the form of words or symbols. Conveying the message to the receiver in a way that can be understood is the next aspect. The receiver must have the ability to hear and decipher what they heard conception of the communicator's thought (Barnlund 2017, p 47). The whole process has the potential for misunderstandings when the communication is flawed. Military organizations and business companies all over the world follow this simple process but on a larger scale and using different methods of interaction.

Globally, organizations communicate through various methods. Downward, upward, diagonal, and horizontal communications are the most common systems used. Downward communication entails the flow of information from the top executive to the employee and is often found in organizations which have an excessively absolutist system of management. The upside of downward communication is the purpose of span control. It is a reference to the number of people who report to one superior and involves the functions of preparation, organizing, and leading. A great span of control is when a leader is tasked with supervising many juniors, and a narrow span of control occurs whereby a leader is placed in charge of a few staffers (Barnlund 2017, p 51).

In upward communication, information flows from the employees to the upper levels of the executive board. The fundamental aim of this communication is to notify the executive of the status at the lower levels and is an effective way for the management to visualize organizational communication in general. It guarantees that duties are performed on time; accurate feedback is transmitted and keeps everyone on the same page with a unified goal. On the other hand, in horizontal communication, information flows between employees and branches which are on similar organizational levels. It facilitates harmonization and aggregation of undertakings of departments that pertinently do independent tasks. Horizontal communication can assume many forms such as carrying out of tasks, problem-solving, and exchange of ideas (Lewis, 2019). On a larger scale, it offers a shared vision, direction, proper responses and the capacity to accomplish any alterations efficiently besides for management executives to attain control.

Under diagonal communication, information circulates between individuals who occupy different organizational levels and their relationship is not seamless with the top executives. It is not often used, but on specific occasions where it complements other communication modes (Lewis, 2019). For instance when labor committees arrange direct discussions between staffers and the executive board and in the process cutting off the first line and middle-level managers.

Just like in any organization, the methods of communication adopted are usually written, oral, and wordless interaction. Documented communication is official via forms such as internal memos and bulletins. Verbal communication, nevertheless, can be formal and informal. Business meetings are an example of official communication whereby reasons, goals, rules of the conference are stipulated. In contrast to formal communication, informal communication can happen both officially and unofficially. An official character is witnessed in conversations among staff and telephone networks to speed up business processes. An informal style of informal communication is often referred to as hearsay communication (Thomas and Stephens, 2015).

In military organizations, the interaction between individuals is heavily influenced by rank. The rank structure is well depicted, and it would be uncommon for a seaman to communicate with his skipper on board a ship; instead, he would be required to follow the chain of command which is the pecking order of the soldiers above him and send the message to his most immediate superior. For instance, the US military has come up with ways to bridge the gap in communication between departments (Williams et al., 2016). They can be described as communication between commanders by following the command structure, and interaction between staffs of those commands.

Commanders commonly respond to other orders casually, but may officially exchange information with the juniors when issuing commands such as duty orders, operation orders, and hazardous orders. They correspond to junior staffers, peers, and their seniors through requests for assistance such as the request for information and additional personnel or as the situation dictates. Staffs interact informally considering they are not commanders and cannot issue orders to departments telling them what to do. However, because they give counsel to the commanders, they are quite influential, and the subservient staff members often attend to orders to staff members who are at a higher rank. For that reason, caution must be exercised in the case where staffers of a higher ranking ask subordinate staffers to carry out a particular task (Williams et al., 2016).

The Army, Air Force, Navy, and other disciplined forces have a myriad of documents detailing command, chain of command, and the duties and obligations of staff. Command and staff channels of communication are vital as it would difficult to achieve any progress among organizations if commanders had to do all the communicating (Williams et al., 2016). Nevertheless, subservient staff needs formal notification in the course of operations to report for their people and assert order in their organization.

Operations at any military base are usually a flurry of activities, and proper communication is advocated to avoid any misunderstanding that could potentially have catastrophic events. Assignment requests, staff meetings, and medical support missions are examples of duties which might be running simultaneously. Some guidelines require to be followed when using informal requests at staff level communication (Harris et al. 2016, p 65). Making a requisition for information when it can be obtained easily should not take more than an hour, essential applications should be written into an order ASAP, and duties that can be carried out within an hour are examples of when to use informal requests.

Looking into the command level communication, orders are used when information that is requested will be taxing and time-consuming, numerous meetings will take long and when the request is foreseen as a potential cause for opposition from its recipients. A senior officer in the subordinate headquarters might be resentful to a junior officer in a higher command when they issue them with instructions (Harris et al. 2016, p 69). Even in the case where they might not take offense, the senior staffers are usually busier than their juniors; therefore, it is essential for proper flow of staff level communication to happen between roughly comparable dockets.

Generally, in ranked organizations like the military, regular correspondence should occur amidst individuals on a similar rank, a step up or step down. Hence, division heads commonly correspond with section heads, service heads, and staff executives, whereas chiefs of staff chiefly engage with commanders, deputy commanders, and section heads (De Graaf, Dimitriu, and Ringsmose, 2015). Specific interactions happen among ranks, but during circumstances that are not pressing and ordinary, correspondence assumes this regulation typically.

Strategic communication has been applied in recent times such as during the Operation Enduring Freedom that primarily began in Afghanistan but spread to the Philippines and parts of Africa. It was dubbed the Global War on Terrorism in light of the September 11th attack that happened in the United States. The counterterrorism operation set the tone for many technological and doctrinal benchmarks for the use of conventional and unconventional forces. A critical element that was implemented was the integration of critical strategic communications resources in a unique manner (De Graaf, Dimitriu, and Ringsmose, 2015). The communications design that was installed at the operational headquarters and commanders in the Afghanistan Area of the Central Command (CENTCOM) Area of Responsibility (AOR) consolidated the use of reach-back communications.

Conclusion

The Army's triumph in providing strategic signal support to personnel on Operation Enduring Freedom was quite an arduous and complicated process. In spite of numerous challenges, vital information was transmitted. Reach back communication is a system that was employed and is widely used in military communication specialists. It is a communication service that extends back to a fixed location, which after that connects into the Defense Information Systems Network (DISN). The extension offers secure data, voice, and video services. The DISN is described as an amalgamated global level telecommunications framework that provides end to end information transfer network for backing military operations. It is unambiguous t...