Why C4?

Greetings, and welcome to the first blog post for C4 - Explosive Leadership Tactics. I would imagine that many of you wonder why I picked C4. Well, there are two reasons.

First, C4 is a plastic explosive that can be molded to fit many different shapes and situations. As little or as much C4 can be applied as needed to complete the job. During my time in Iraq, I saw it do some really interesting stuff. Leadership is the same way. A leader has to decide how much or how little to apply, but when done correctly, the results (like the plastic) are always explosive.

The second reason is that C4 actually stand for 4 C's: Conceive, Communicate, Command, and Complete. These, I feel are the basic steps of leadership. Over the next four weeks I will blog on those topics, so I don't want to go into too much detail here; but I think most people would agree that each of these C's are  necessary to be an effective leader.

I do have to give some credit however to my time in the Army. When I was a lieutenant, the Army taught us about the 2C's: Command and Control. Later somebody (probably a Colonel looking for a bullet point in his evaluation) started using 4C's: Command, Control, Communicate, and Computers. I loved the first 3, but Computers? I am in technology, and I had to wonder... why Computers? From my standpoint, they provide information and analysis... Sounds like Communication and Conceiving ideas (more on that later). And I wondered why this anonymous Colonel didn't put the 4 after the C's.

Anyway, the 4C's from the Army are what got me thinking. I started to break down what I thought was in leadership, which is where I came up with my own list of C's. Hopefully, over time we can journey down the road of my experiences, where I can describe how each one impacted my decision making process. I hope that you will join me in this experiment, and feel free to comment with your own insights and experiences. After all, a large part of Leadership is Communications!