Book SummaryTeam of Teams, by Stanley McChrystal

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of Team of Teams

In 2004 in Iraq, the U.S. Joint Special Operations Task Force was struggling to counter Al Qaeda, which was spreading sectarian discord and violence to undermine the shaky Iraqi government.

The U.S. task force—consisting of elite special forces teams, strategists, and analysts from every branch of the U.S. military—was charged with disrupting Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) by conducting raids, gathering intelligence, and killing or capturing terrorist leaders. However, despite its enormous resources and expertise, the task force soon found its conventional approach—based on a rigid command structure and lengthy centralized planning processes—failing for two reasons:

1) They faced a new type of enemy. The huge, slow-moving task force couldn’t keep up with AQI, which functioned as a decentralized network of agile teams that could strike quickly, reconfigure immediately, and integrate their actions globally.

2) They faced a new type of environment. Iraq was a complex environment far different from what the military organized and trained for—it was characterized by rapid, unpredictable events, rather than events that military organizers could foresee and plan for.

In addition, the technology of global connectedness allowed terrorists to operate in radically different ways. It meant AQI leader Abu Musab al Zarqawi could build an effective organization despite having few resources. Through bomb-making videos and online propaganda, AQI incited sectarian conflict in Iraq. Further, the ability to transmit information instantly and widely gave AQI enormous influence among disaffected people and enabled it to constantly expand.

When General Stanley McChrystal took command of the task force, he realized that to counter the chaos that AQI nurtured and thrived on, the task force needed a dynamic approach to fit the dynamic enemy and environment.

The first step was to overcome what the military refers to as its limfac, or its limiting factor—the biggest element hindering success. The task force’s limiting factor was its inflexible structure or organizational model. McChrystal set out to transform the task force into a “team of teams” that functioned on a huge scale with the agility and effectiveness demonstrated by its small, elite commando teams in individual missions.

Understanding the Strengths of Teams

McChrystal identified four qualities of special forces teams that he wanted to scale up to organization level:

1. Empowerment: a bottom-up structure as opposed to a command-and-control model
2. A shared consciousness (a common understanding and mindset)
3. Bonds of trust and a strong purpose
4. A sense of the whole or awareness of the entire playing field

Empowerment and Shared Consciousness

Navy SEALs apply all of these four qualities to deliver extraordinary performance, adapting to handle unpredictable and complex challenges. The following is an example of how they apply the first two qualities—empowerment and shared consciousness.

In 2009, Somali pirates boarded a U.S. container ship off the coast of Somalia, seized the captain, Richard Phillips, and held him at gunpoint on a small lifeboat.

Two Navy ships arrived on scene with three Navy SEAL snipers who’d been air-dropped onto one of the ships. Through night-vision scopes, the SEALs watched the three pirates holding the captain hostage and waited for the right moment to strike. Suddenly, all three snipers fired simultaneously from 75 feet away, each striking a different pirate in the head without injuring Captain Phillips.

The SEAL team succeeded not only because of their skills, but also because they became essentially one mind, thinking as a unit. Sharing a collective team consciousness or mindset, they each came to the decision to fire at the same time. Additionally, although they were in constant contact with their commander, the snipers acted on their own in choosing the moment to strike.

The team’s structure (empowered members thinking as one) rather than having a centrally determined and controlled plan led to success in this operation.

Trust and Purpose

Besides empowerment and shared consciousness, trust and purpose are critical to team functioning. Navy SEALs training is designed to build trust and purpose so SEALs can function effectively (as the snipers did) as a unit.

Prospective SEALs undergo a six-month, three-part program called Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL Training (BUD/S). While it involves physical conditioning, diving, and fighting on land, its major purpose is teambuilding. In contrast, command structures like the task force’s initial structure aren’t about teamwork, only following orders.

In SEAL training, trainees rarely do anything alone (not even walking to meals). At minimum, they complete tasks with a partner. They’re divided into crews of five to eight that work together for the six months. They develop trust and learn to function within a small group, communicating, negotiating, and taking cues from each other.

Teams whose members know and trust each other unequivocally are capable of extraordinary performance. Like the snipers who rescued the ship’s captain, these teams can organize a coordinated response on the fly in environments where the complexity exceeds a single leader’s or commander’s ability to predict an outcome or control and monitor the response.

Building Commitment to a Purpose

In addition to building trust, SEAL training ensures that each team member is in sync with their unit’s function, the mission objectives, and their individual role. Part of building this commitment involves making the training so onerous that only the most committed believers complete it—this level of dedication is critical when teammates put their lives on the line for each other and the mission.

A Sense of the Whole

In order for team members to work toward the same goal, they first need an understanding of what the goal is. This contrasts with...

Team of Teams Summary Introduction

In 2004 in Iraq, the U.S. Joint Special Operations Task Force was struggling to counter Al Qaeda, which was spreading sectarian discord and violence to undermine the shaky Iraqi government.

The U.S. task force—consisting of elite special forces units, strategists, and analysts from every branch of the U.S. military—was charged with conducting raids, gathering intelligence, and killing or capturing terrorist leaders. However, despite its enormous resources and expertise, the task force soon found its conventional approach—including a rigid command structure and lengthy planning processes—failing against an unconventional enemy. The task force couldn’t keep up with Al Qaeda, which functioned as a decentralized network of agile teams that could strike quickly, reconfigure immediately, and integrate their actions globally.

The task force also found itself in a complex environment different from what the military was organized and trained for, characterized by rapid, interconnected events, rather than predictable events that military organizers could plan for.

When General Stanley...

Team of Teams Summary Part 1: Old Methods, New Environment | Chapter 1: Getting a Handle on AQI

• In Iraq, the U.S. Joint Special Operations Task Force faced a new type of enemy and environment, for which its structure and methods weren’t designed.

Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) was an entirely new kind of threat operating in a changed environment, and the war against them was unlike any 20th-century war. Terrorism, radicalism, and insurgency weren’t new, but in 2004, they were transformed by the technology of global connectedness, which allowed terrorists to operate in radically different ways.

A New Type of Enemy

The Joint Special Operations Task Force struggled to get a handle on an agile enemy constantly on the move with no fixed base of operations, no MO (standard method of operation), and no hierarchy or structure—only a loose network, shifting leaders, and skillful use of cyberspace.

On paper, the task force had a lopsided advantage over AQI:

• Recruitment: U.S. special operators were top quality; AQI recruited disgruntled locals and smuggled in foreign fighters.
• Communications: U.S. specialists had sophisticated and instantaneous communications systems; AQI relied on face-to-face meetings and letters delivered by courier to maintain...

Shortform Exercise: What Is Your Organization’s Limfac?

The military refers to the biggest element hindering the success of a mission or operation as its limfac, or its limiting factor. For example, in Iraq, the joint operations task force’s limfac was its unwieldy structure, which rendered its response to AQI ineffective.

What is your organization’s mission? What is its limfac—the main factor standing in the way of the mission’s success?

Team of Teams Summary Chapter 2: Managing for Efficiency

• In Iraq, task force operations initially struggled against AQI because they used an inflexible organizational model rooted in both military tradition and concepts of efficiency from the industrial age.

This chapter explores the development and impact of the efficiency mindset—or doctrine of scientific management, in which processes are standardized and optimized for predictable results—and its pitfalls in the 21st century. For the last 150 years, this doctrine has shaped organizations of all kinds, including, initially, the joint task force in Iraq.

Efficiency on the Factory Floor

The efficiency model took root in the early factories of the 19th century, when Frederick Winslow Taylor introduced “scientific management.” It has influenced how we do things ever since—from running businesses to designing our kitchens—as well as how we think about solving problems.

In early factories prior to Taylor’s management system, workers produced items the way artisans and craftsmen had done in the small shops that preceded factories—they employed their own methods and workflows and took breaks as they desired.

In contrast, Taylor was obsessed with finding the _one best...

Team of Teams Summary Chapter 3: Responding in a Complicated Versus Complex Environment

• The task force’s initial structure and efficiency approach was designed to work in a complicated environment. However, Iraq was a complex environment, which required a different approach.

Systems and the environments in which they operate can be either complicated or complex. This chapter looks at the differences between the two, and why complicated solutions don’t work for complex problems and environments.

Complicated systems and problems are those that require effort to sort out, but that ultimately are understandable and predictable. For example, engines are complicated, with many parts, but with study, you can see how the parts connect and behave, and you can predict what will happen if you change a part. Similarly, in complicated factory or military operations of the past, you could understand connections and predict the results of specific actions.

In contrast, complex systems are nonlinear with infinite components and interactions that are enabled and speeded up by global technology. A key feature of these systems is that small events can have ripple effects that build to an outcome no one could have imagined. An example is the Tunisian fruit...

Shortform Exercise: How Does Your Organization Address Complexity?

Many organizations are used to operating in a complicated environment, in which they can foresee and adjust for change. But their responses, such as planning efforts, may no longer work because the environments in which many organizations operate today are actually complex (changing quickly in infinite, unpredictable ways).

Describe the environment your business or organization operates in. Is it complicated or complex? Why do you think so?

Team of Teams Summary Chapter 4: Restructuring for Resilience and Adaptability

• The key to confronting threats in a complex environment is pursuing resilience rather than predictability, and pursuing adaptability rather than efficiency. For the task force, this would require adopting a new structure that allowed it to reconfigure (adapt) to chaos in Iraq with agility and resilience.

Since AQI couldn’t match U.S. capabilities (strength and efficiency), they studied task force tactics and adapted—they were agile and resilient and could thus thrive in the complex environment where the task force struggled for the upper hand.

For example, AQI adjusted constantly to U.S. tactics rather than depending on a single best process. After learning that U.S. commandos used night-vision equipment to implement nighttime raids, AQI operatives began leaving their safe houses at dusk and sleeping in the surrounding fields to avoid being caught in an attack. To defeat the enemy in this complex environment, U.S. forces needed to develop resilience and adaptability.

What Is Resilience?

In the book Resilience Thinking, authors Brian Walker and David Salt define **resilience as a system’s ability to withstand disruption or shock while remaining intact and...

Team of Teams Summary Part 2: Forging Effective Teams | Chapter 5: Building Trust and Purpose

• The task force’s elite commando units from all branches of the military were models of the kind of adaptability needed at the organization level. The qualities that made them adaptable were their empowerment structure, a “shared consciousness” or team mindset, trust, and purpose forged during rigorous training. The most effective teams in other organizations share these qualities.

Part 2 examines the strengths of adaptable teams and the challenges of scaling them up in a large organization. This chapter looks at examples of teamwork in life-and-death situations that demonstrate the following qualities of effective, adaptable teams:

1. Empowerment: a bottom-up structure as opposed to a command-and-control model
2. A shared consciousness (a common understanding or mindset)
3. Bonds of trust and a strong purpose
4. A sense of the whole or awareness of the entire playing field

Team Qualities: Empowerment and Shared Consciousness

For teams to respond effectively in a crisis, members need to be empowered to act quickly on their own based on their training, rather than waiting for instructions from authorities who aren’t present or who can’t formulate a response to...

Shortform Exercise: Reflect on Team Effectiveness

Effective teams share several qualities: a bottom-up empowerment structure, a shared consciousness or team mindset, a sense of the big picture, and bonds of trust and purpose.

Think of an effective team you’ve participated in or one you’ve observed in your organization. What were its functions, aims, and results?

Team of Teams Summary Chapter 6: Breaking Down Silos

• Although the task force’s special forces teams were adaptable and effective, its command-oriented overall structure (a “command of teams”) limited the adaptability of the organization as a whole. Teams functioned in silos, coordinating with their commands but not with other teams. This created disconnects that hindered the overall mission.

While the task force in Iraq brought together elite forces and strategists from all branches of the military, they operated as separate teams under a joint command, or a “command of teams.” It was less rigid than a total command structure, but had serious weaknesses endemic to many large organizations that similarly try to incorporate teams without changing the overall organizational structure to coordinate and scale up teams’ capabilities.

The MECE Structure

While incorporating teams, the task force and many organizations operate within a framework that management consultants refer to as MECE, which stands for Mutually Exclusive and Collectively Exhaustive. This structure divides an organization into functions or units that don’t overlap but collectively cover everything. The idea is that a leader assigns tasks and if each unit...

Team of Teams Summary Chapter 7: Introducing Systems Thinking

• For task force teams to work together across silos required that everyone share a big-picture understanding of the system in which they all operated. The task force in Iraq needed a systems management approach like the one NASA adopted during the space race.

The opposite of a structure based on MECE or silos is one based on systems thinking. Introduced at NASA in the 1960s, systems thinking enabled a disjointed organization to work together to create completely new technology to send a man to the moon.

Systems thinking argues that to understand one of a system’s parts, you need to have at least a basic understanding of the system as a whole and how the parts interrelate—in other words, a sense of the big picture. For example, doctors need a systems understanding of the body—they can’t treat one body part without an understanding of how it interacts with or is affected by the whole body. A systems engineering or systems management approach applies this thinking to running organizations.

Systems Thinking Helped Win the Space Race

In the early 1960s, NASA lagged the Soviet Union in the space race—the Soviets produced the first earth orbiter, launched the first...

Shortform Exercise: Rate Your Organization’s Transparency

For organizations to function effectively as a network of teams, members need a common knowledge of what’s going on. Yet a majority of organizations share only the information they think people need to know to do their specific jobs.

Describe your organization’s policy or practice for handling information.

Team of Teams Summary Part 3: Reinventing the Task Force | Chapter 8: Changing Space and Culture

• To scale up the individual team strengths of shared consciousness and strong bonds of trust, McChrystal overhauled both the task force’s physical space and its culture. This included rethinking every organizational procedure; a key was transforming the daily Operations and Intelligence briefing or O&I.

The first step was redesigning the physical space in which the task force worked. When the task force moved its headquarters from the Baghdad Airport to Balad Airbase, a former Iraqi base 64 miles to the north, McCrystal had an opportunity to create a new physical space conducive to the shared consciousness he wanted to create.

Changing the Space

The typical layout of military facilities and offices of many organizations reflects hierarchy and specialization or silos. For example, the Army’s installation at Fort Bragg, the task force’s U.S. headquarters, was originally built in the 1980s as a collection of windowless buildings divided into offices. These offices were further subdivided into cubicles separating commanders from lower-ranking officers and limiting communication between people handling different tasks.

Similarly, corporate high rises are divided into...

Team of Teams Summary Chapter 9: Scaling Up Trust

• In addition to shared consciousness, cooperation across silos was necessary for success. To foster cooperation between teams, the task force used embedding and liaison programs to create connections and build trust among teams and partner organizations.

Cooperation Versus Competition

Despite expanded information sharing, individual agencies and close-knit teams within the task force weren’t naturally inclined to cooperate with each other—they thought in terms of competition instead (as noted in Chapter 7). They needed to understand how cooperation rather than competition served both their interests and those of the task force as a whole.

A scenario of game theory called the Prisoner’s Dilemma illustrates how you can serve yourself in the process of acting in the group’s interest:

• Two crooks are arrested, interrogated individually, and offered the same deal: Stay mum and get one year in jail, or rat on your partner and be released. But if your partner rats on you, you get two years.
• Each crook is motivated to rat in order to be released (that is, to serve his own interest at the expense of his partner). But if they both rat, they’ll both get two...

Team of Teams Summary Part 4: Reconsidering Leadership | Chapter 10: Empowered Execution

• Shared consciousness enabled the task force to understand and react to the interdependence of the complex environment, where actions had wide ripple effects. But speed—reacting fast enough—remained a challenge due to the command structure. The answer was the scaling up the empowerment model that enabled teams to make on-the-fly decisions based on conditions.

The Need for Speed

While the restructured task force in Iraq had the shared consciousness and team connectivity to determine the right thing to do, they often couldn’t act on their own—decisions had to travel up and down a lengthy chain of command, which took time and delayed action. This chapter looks at how the task force improved its response time by pushing decision-making authority down.

Paradoxically, the instant communication enabled by technology slowed decision-making, as more people had the ability to weigh in; senior leaders wanted to approve things that, in the past, they wouldn’t have been directly involved in due to lack of real-time communication. Approval processes for strikes on terrorist leaders extended to the Pentagon or even the White House.

Yet delayed decisions could allow a target...

Team of Teams Summary Chapter 11: A ‘Gardener’ Model of Leadership

• McChrystal’s final lesson from his task force experience in Iraq was that speed and interconnectedness have rendered the old leadership model obsolete. Instead of controllers, organizations need leaders who act as gardeners or enablers who cultivate and maintain the ecosystem in which the organization functions.

From Chess Master to Gardener

When he took command of the task force, McChrystal had a traditional military leader’s mindset, in which he expected to know all the answers and, like a chess master, make all the right moves with his units against Al Qaeda. The task force’s extraordinary technological capability, which gave it eyes everywhere, encouraged this view of being in control of the “game.” However, AQI played a different game, moving multiple “pieces” at speeds the task force initially couldn’t match.

As he realized the way to defeat AQI was to create an agile, adaptable organization, McChrystal changed his idea of leadership from chess master to gardener. He came to view his role as creating an ecosystem—a framework, processes, and culture in which the task force could flourish.

He sought to make fewer decisions and instead focus on creating the...

Team of Teams Summary Part 5: Putting the Pieces Together | Chapter 12: A New Organizational Model

• The Task Force’s team-of-teams organizational model, incorporating the transformational concepts of trust, purpose, shared consciousness, and empowered execution, finally brought down the terrorist Abu Musab al Zarqawi. In our connected, complex world, all organizations need to apply the same concepts as a matter of survival.

Success: The Search for Zarqawi

By the spring of 2006, the playing field had changed: In several years, the task force had 1) learned a great deal more about Zarqawi and his organization, and 2) dramatically increased its effectiveness in gathering intelligence and disrupting the terrorist network.

McChrystal was increasingly confident the task force would soon capture or kill Zarqawi. A sign of the task force’s growing efficacy was its capture and use of some raw video of Zarqawi, which AQI had intended to turn into propaganda. The video showed the terrorist leader shooting weapons and looking tough. But before AQI could edit and post it, the task force posted humiliating outtakes showing Zarqawi handling his weapon amateurishly while another fighter inadvertently grabbed a searing hot gun barrel. In addition, thanks to the task force’s new...