“We cannot legislate trust.”
That’s one key takeaway from Emilie Cleret (École de Guerre) and Søren Sjøgren (Royal Danish Defence College), our guests in the latest episode of Future Aspects of C2: The Big 5.
As NATO moves towards Multi-Domain Operations (MDO), commanders will increasingly rely on capabilities and actors they cannot command, from nations and civil authorities to industry. The Alliance Concept for Cross-Domain Command makes clear that this transition depends as much on culture as on technology. So what does leadership look like when you can’t control everything?
In this episode on Human Factors, we discuss:
Why moving from hierarchies to networks is such a radical change for military command
How influence, trust and shared understanding are becoming as important as formal authority
What “cognitive interoperability” means when 32 nations use the same words but don’t always mean the same thing
How education, debate, war games and smaller exercises can bring cultural differences and friction to the surface
How leaders can use technology critically while keeping human judgement at the centre
NATO doesn’t need another new structure or doctrine. It needs people who are better prepared to make the existing ones work together.
Listen to the full episode on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7Br8xu0F6N5R7Xy4pqp6CQ?si=UFCY7nr1QIqLu9C7cRYU7Q
