PDF Summary:Team of Teams, by Stanley McChrystal

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Team of Teams is the story of how McChrystal transformed the task force in the middle of a war— a task he likened to a sports team switching from football to basketball in the middle of a game—requiring it to discard familiar equipment as well as every preconception about winning a war. Drawing on both military history and management theory, McChrystal suggests that the task force’s experiences in reinventing itself can apply to many organizations facing unconventional challenges.

This summary is divided into five parts that link the task force’s practical experience with management theory and the experiences of other large organizations:

• Part 1 describes the new and challenging environment the tradition-bound U.S. task force faced in Iraq and discusses theories of organizational management and change.
• Part 2 examines the strengths of adaptable teams and the challenges of scaling them up in a large organization.
• Part 3 describes how the task force transformed itself into an interconnected network of adaptable teams.
• Part 4 examines how the role of leaders must change in an adaptable organization.
• Part 5 puts the pieces together, showing how the...

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Yet, AQI managed to prevail. An example of AQI’s effectiveness against the task force was its September 2004 bombing of a celebration to open Baghdad sewer plant. AQI terrorists drove cars loaded with explosives into the crowd, killing 35 children and wounding 10 Americans and 140 Iraqis. Within hours, AQI had posted a video of its success on the internet.

Despite being the “best of the best,” the task force’s elite special forces, strategists, and intelligence analysts hadn’t discovered the plans and prevented the bombing. Moreover, terrorist attacks like the sewer plant bombing kept increasing. In 2004, there had been more terrorist attacks in Iraq than in the entire world in 2003. They continued to escalate and by spring 2006, attacks were killing more than 1,000 Iraqis a month.

AQI Tactics

AQI’s foothold in Iraq dated back to the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the fall of Saddam Hussein. After Hussein’s fall, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, who ran a jihadist organization and training camp in Afghanistan, moved into Iraq and joined with dispossessed Sunnis to resist the new Iraqi government.

Zarqawi’s goal was to trigger a sectarian civil war that would destroy Iraq, paving the...

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Taylor’s methods, while not popular with factory workers, resulted in enormous time and cost savings for factory owners (small savings at each step added up). Factories produced more faster with less waste and fewer people.

Taylor introduced his assembly-line metal production system at the 1900 Paris Exposition. His small line of a few lathes and workers could cut 50 feet of steel per minute compared to the normal nine feet. He had determined the optimal temperature for cutting steel, the best way for using water to cool the lathe, and the best speed for running the equipment. Taylor’s demonstration created quite a buzz, with one engineer even hailing it as a landmark in human history.

Far-Reaching Impacts

Taylor believed achieving optimum efficiency could be applied to anything—from cutting steel to cooking eggs for breakfast. It wasn’t long before this thinking affected nearly every corner of society, white-collar work included: There was a best way to sit at a desk, assemble papers, and put a sheet into a typewriter. Waste was decried and efficiency became the greatest good.

The new drive for efficiency had two profound effects on organizations:

1. **It...

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• An AQI propaganda post could trigger riots over a wide area.
• A video posted online of a successful AQI attack could immediately boost recruitment.

How Complexity Works

Scientists have been studying complexity for years. In 1961, Edward Lorenz of MIT had a key insight into complexity that became known as the butterfly effect. While manipulating weather data with numerous variables, he realized that a tiny change he made in rounding the data the second time through had a huge cumulative effect on the results. This led him to two theories about interconnectedness:

1) Complex systems have countless parts that interact in countless ways. Therefore, a small event could trigger a chain of interactions that has a cumulative impact over time. Illustrating this, Lorenz theorized that the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil could start a chain of billions of interactions in air currents and weather systems leading to a tornado in Texas.

2) Predicting the future in a complex system is nearly impossible because any number of interlinked factors could come into play and affect the outcome. A small action could have no effect or a colossal one—but it’s...

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For example, in recent years, Dutch engineers have made resilience instead of flood-proofing their objective in handling water.

• After a massive 1953 storm and tide overwhelmed dikes, authorities at first tried to predict and control where water would go with a huge containment project completed in 1997. But the system’s channels actually caused water to flow higher and faster, making sea flooding worse. Also, the system couldn’t handle heavy rainfall and snowmelt in the Alps that created flooding from the opposite direction (rivers couldn’t absorb the extra water).
• So engineers shifted their goal from control and containment to resilience—withstanding flooding. They lowered dikes to allow rivers to spread out, and they used farmland as floodplains to handle extra water until the rivers could absorb it.

When it comes to environmental issues like flood control, resilience thinking is actually a reversion to the past when humans coexisted with nature more than they tried to control it. Since we instead became optimizers and created specialized systems to increase efficiency for the greatest return, we’ve undermined adaptability and thus resilience.

Resilient...

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The crew had only moments to respond to the crisis, which occurred at only 2,000 feet (emergency training addresses engine failure at 20,000 feet but not below that). Every member of the crew sprang into action without being told what to do. In less than four minutes, they turned the plane around, prepared for a crash landing, and splashed down on the Hudson. Everyone on board survived as a result of the empowered teamwork—Sullenberger wouldn’t have had time to assign and supervise all the crew members and still land the plane safely.

United Flight 173

In contrast, United Flight 173, en route from New York to Portland in 1978, crashed, killing two crew members and seriously injuring 24 people.

The tragedy began when the aircraft developed a minor problem with landing gear while nearing Portland—the gear was down but the crew didn’t know it due to an indicator light not working. When they finally determined the gear was down, they weren’t sure the wheel suspension was working, in which case the wheels could collapse upon landing.

Rather than functioning as an adaptive team, the crew waited to act until they received instructions from the captain, who alone decided...

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While this type of carefully planned, intricate operation worked for addressing a focused and predictably unfolding crisis, the situation in Iraq was different. Teams in Iraq needed to be able to communicate and work together in fluid, unpredictable operations against AQI.

2) An Intelligence Disconnect

The MECE structure also impeded operations at the headquarters level. On an inspection tour of the task force intelligence facility at the Baghdad airport, McChrystal found bags of unopened intelligence material (documents, computers, and cell phones) seized during commando raids, which had never been analyzed. By the time the backlog of intelligence was likely to be analyzed, it would be useless.

Because the teams collecting the material had no contact with the people analyzing it, the analysts didn’t know how to prioritize or organize it. While the teams could each come up with better individual procedures for handling the intelligence material, what they really needed was to communicate with each other so that the most important information could be quickly examined.

McChrystal found such chokepoints or disconnects between all teams. Instead of living and functioning...

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A new associate administrator, George Mueller, realized that NASA’S silo-based structure wouldn’t get the job done. Lack of communication between independently functioning teams was partly to blame for past rocket failures. Meeting the extremely ambitious goal of a moon launch would require radical transparency and information sharing.

Mueller envisioned NASA as a single, unified mind working with shared information. He insisted that managers and engineers work together and communicate daily. Data was displayed in a central control room linked to field centers. He ordered the creation of a “teleservices network” that connected project control rooms to enable data sharing and teleconferences (this was pre-internet). He brought contractors in-house and shared information with them.

In two years, Mueller’s application of systems thinking, or connecting the parts to the whole through communication and shared information, transformed NASA from a collection of independent research teams to an effective development organization. Within six years, NASA put men on the moon.

In contrast, NASA’s European counterpart ELDO (European Launcher Development Organization) suffered numerous...

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Similarly, to facilitate information sharing at its new location, the task force in Iraq created a central open space referred to as the JOC or Joint Operations Center. A wall of screens displayed live video updates of ongoing operations. Key leaders worked at a U-shaped table, with other tables extending outward for different functions: air and artillery support, intelligence, medical evacuation, and so on. Off to one side was a Situational Awareness Room (SAR) where McChrystal and senior staff tracked global terrorism while the JOC focused on Iraq.

Along with facilitating a shared consciousness through transparency and information sharing, the open layout aimed to encourage emergent intelligence, in which ideas and solutions would bubble up organically. The task force further facilitated this by designating the entire facility as a “top secret” security space, so anyone could discuss anything openly.

Changing the Culture

The new headquarters environment by itself wasn’t enough to change how the task force functioned. **To change organizational culture, the task force adopted “extreme transparency,” or wide information sharing that provided every team with an...

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The task force’s transparency policy, especially as practiced in the O&I, created an awareness of the need for and value of cooperating. But being the first to share or cooperate with another team was still a leap of faith. The key to encouraging cooperation was to build strong teamlike trust between teams so they started thinking of themselves as part of a network.

An Embedding Program Builds Trust

To scale up trust between teams accustomed to operating in silos, the task force established an embedding program, which assigned a team member to a different team for six months. The idea was to:

• Provide embedded team members with a view of the war from within a different team
• Build new personal relationships
• Consequently, create ties between teams

Special operations teams at first resisted the program—however, as a point of pride, each sent their best team member to represent them. The experience built understanding and trust as the embedded team members saw the other teams’ strengths and shared their new-found knowledge with their “home” team.

In a similar program to build ties with the external agencies (the CIA, NSA, and so on), the task force...

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The military operated the same way, on land at least. During the Civil War in 1864, Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant controlled where Major Gen. George Meade moved troops by communicating detailed instructions via letters and postal service.

However, naval operations were another matter—leaders lacked visibility and a communication line to naval commanders. So, a few years earlier, in 1852, President Millard Fillmore empowered Commodore Matthew Perry to do whatever was necessary to “open” feudal Japan as a trade gateway to Asia (foreigners couldn’t enter the country and the Japanese couldn’t leave).

Perry landed, then threatened Japanese officials with attack. He gave them a white flag with the explanation that if they fought, they’d lose, so they might as well keep the surrender option handy. They gave in and, after having threatened war, Perry took it upon himself to negotiate a trade agreement. However, since Perry’s time, communications advances have reduced the authority and autonomy of Navy commanders.

Task Force Empowerment

In 2004 Iraq, McChrystal set out to reverse the command-and-control model in military operations. He realized that running decisions up...

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• Setting an example by practicing his policies, such as information sharing and frank conversation, particularly in the O&I videoconference. He also wore his combat uniform during the briefings to reinforce his commitment and focus to conference participants in Washington.
• At the O&I briefing, maintaining a balance among sharing, reporting, and Q&As. He also remembered and used the names of presenters to put them at ease, asked questions to show interest, and complimented them to build their confidence and investment in the work.
• Thinking out loud, summarizing what he heard, giving his analysis, and asking the presenter what action he planned to take to demonstrate empowerment.
• Avoiding anger and sarcasm, and saying “thank you” frequently to create an atmosphere that encouraged participation.
• Conveying the message that all problems could be understood and solved together.

The ongoing watering, raking, and fertilizing aspects of gardening are comparable to a commander’s visits (called battlefield circulation) to units. While typical visits are intimidating to the host unit, McChrystal tried to use them instead to nurture rather than control.

He viewed the...

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Finally, in mid-May, Allawi revealed the name of Zarqawi’s spiritual adviser, Sheikh Abd al-Rahman, with whom the terrorist leader had regular in-person contact. While this information was a critical breakthrough, finding Rahman wasn’t easy. He lived in chaotic Baghdad, where AQI-driven violence made surveillance difficult. Further, “black swans” (unexpected events) could arise at any time and derail task force monitoring.

When they located and identified Rahman, the task force faced another challenge that, in the past, would have hindered its efforts: Maintaining constant surveillance diverted resources from other task force operations, which could have prompted “tribal” competitiveness among units also operating against AQI targets. However, thanks to shared consciousness, trust, and transparency, everyone understood and united around the common purpose of taking down Zarqawi.

Patient Surveillance

After 17 days of 24/7 surveillance, the task force observed Rahman relocating his family to another residence, which (Allawi had told them) meant he was planning to leave the city to meet with Zarqawi.

With air surveillance, task force members in eight time zones watched...