Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World

by Stanley McChrystal

Communicating priorities and cultural expectations to our team of teams spread across multiple continents was a challenge. Written guidance was essential, but memos competed with the flood of text that engulfed all of us every day. To post brief updates and observations, I used a secure Web-based portal accessible to everyone, carefully composing each memo to ensure that it reflected not only my thoughts, but also my “voice.” I tried to remember “less is more,” and stuck to a few key themes. Experience had taught me that nothing was heard until it had been said several times. Only when I heard my own words echoed or paraphrased back to me by subordinates as essential “truths” did I know they had been fully received. As a leader, however, my most powerful instrument of communication was my own behavior. As a young officer I had been taught that a leader’s example is always on view. Bad examples resonate even more powerfully than good ones. In situations where senior leaders can cloister themselves behind walls or phalanxes of aides, emerging only when their ties are straight, their hair coiffured, and their words carefully chosen, controlling the signal might be possible. But in a world of tweets and 24/7 news coverage, it is not. I didn’t even attempt to hide. Instead, I sought to maintain a consistent example and message. Our daily Operations and Intelligence (O&I) video teleconference became key to my overall communications effort. Although the information exchanged was ...