Team of Teams

McChrystal, Stanley

Overview: When General Stanley McChrystal took command of the Joint Special Operations Task Force in 2004, he quickly realized that conventional military tactics were failing. Al Qaeda in Iraq was a decentralized network that could move quickly, strike ruthlessly, then seemingly vanish into the local population. The allied forces had a huge advantage in numbers, equipment, and training—but none of that seemed to matter. One might expect a proven military leader to extol the virtue, legitimacy and transferability of military leadership in a corporate context. However, this is not the case in “Team of Teams;” quite the contrary to be honest and thus we have a different interpretation of leadership and teams from a unique leader statesman.

General McChrystal led a hierarchical, highly disciplined machine of thousands of men and women. But to defeat Al Qaeda in Iraq, his Task Force would have to acquire the enemy’s speed and flexibility. McChrystal and his colleagues discarded a century of conventional wisdom and remade the Task Force, in the midst of a grueling war, into something new: a network that combined extremely transparent communication with decentralized decision-making authority. The walls between silos were torn down. Leaders looked at the best practices of the smallest units and found ways to extend them to thousands of people on three continents, using technology to establish a oneness that would have been impossible even a decade earlier. The Task Force became a “team of teams”—faster, flatter, more flexible—and beat back Al Qaeda.

• In Part I, General McChrystal reviews the situation as he found it in 2004. On the surface, the Al Qaeda in Iraq looked like a traditional insurgency, however, in reality it was unlike anything he had witnessed before. He explains that the US task force structure and culture of disciplined, stratified reductionism is deeply rooted in military organizational history. This culture of “scientific management” has it beginnings in the Industrial Revolution and can be found in most industries across the globe. Efficiency had been for decades leadership’s maximum. Al Qaeda seemed to have adapted a new approach, one that was simultaneously adaptive and resilient. What do you see around that is done because it has always been done that way and may need changing. What do you see in your day-to-day environment that are problems, because we “allow them to be”? What do you see as the strengths of the traditional type of command structure? How can this type of structure limit one’s approach to problem solving?
• In Part II, the author examines the road from a hierarchical command structure to one based upon teams. He relates that the present day structure is excellent in executing planned procedures, however teams are more flexible and more adaptable in a dynamic environment. Even moving to the next level, a “command of teams” would not be agile enough to defeat the enemy. Further, many of the desired traits that teams bring to an organization were not scalable to the size task force General McChrystal commanded. The choice would be a “team of teams,” or rather an organization where the relationships between member teams resembled that between individuals and a single team. This could break the silos down while driving cooperation and information exchange. Where do you see examples of silos within the Air Force? What are their strengths? Weaknesses? What do you believe makes a team successful (think about your favorite sports team)?
• In Part III, General McChrystal compares his task force with NASA’s complex problems that required a systems approach, because of the interdependence of the operating environment. Both organizations required members to understand the whole, or the interconnected system, not just how the organization fits together. In Iraq, cooperation across silos became necessary for success, where embedded liaisons created strong lateral ties between units. A sense of purpose and the formation of trust between teams and their members created a shared consciousness vital for success. What is the “right size” for a team? Can a team be too big for success? To small? How do you build trust inside a team? What can be done to build trust between teams? Where have you seen this successful?
• In Parts IV and V, the author highlights that traditional organizations implement as much control over subordinates as technology allows. A new approach would be required for the new structure. A shared consciousness among the teams would help overcome interdependence, but speed would be required to fully create an environment of success. The answer would be to create a structure where individuals and teams closest to the problem offered the best ability to make decisions and act decisively with leadership engaging not to control, but to ensure the teams flourished. How do you go about creating a shared consciousness among teams? What are challenges you see for leadership to “letting go?” What have you done while in a leadership role that was unintuitive and found that it worked? How could you implement a “team of teams” approach in your unit? How could this work across the Air Force?