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

by Stanley McChrystal

The speed and interdependence of events had produced new dynamics that threatened to overwhelm the time-honored processes and culture we’d built.

Efficiency remains important, but the ability to adapt to complexity and continual change has become an imperative.

Efficiency, once the sole icon on the hill, must make room for adaptability in structures, processes, and mind-sets that is often uncomfortable.

The first was that the constantly changing, entirely unforgiving environment in which we all now operate denies the satisfaction of any permanent fix. The second was that the organization we crafted, the processes we refined, and the relationships we forged and nurtured are no more enduring than the physical conditioning that kept our soldiers fit: an organization must be constantly led or, if necessary, pushed uphill toward what it must be. Stop pushing and it doesn’t continue, or even rest in place; it rolls backward.

This was not a war of planning and discipline; it was one of agility and

innovation.

We became what we called “a team of teams”: a large command that captured at scale the traits of agility normally limited to small teams.

The pursuit of “efficiency”—getting the most with the least investment of energy, time, or money—was once a laudable goal, but being effective in today’s world is less a question of optimizing for a known (and relatively stable) set of variables than responsiveness to a constantly shifting environment. Adaptability, not efficiency, must become our central competency.

Nelson’s real genius lay not in the clever maneuver for which he is remembered, but in the years of innovative management and leadership that preceded it.

And just as the development of the tank changed the realities of military defense, the proliferation of new information-age technologies rendered Taylorist efficiency an outdated managerial paradigm.

Though we know far more about everything in it, the world has in many respects become less predictable.

After weeks of analysis, he found the culprit. It wasn’t in the code or the machine; it was in the data.

Complexity, on the other hand, occurs when the number of interactions between components increases dramatically—the interdependencies that allow viruses and bank runs to spread; this is where things quickly become unpredictable. Think of the “break” in a pool game—the first forceful strike of the colored balls with the white cue ball.

Nowhere was this more visible than at the Pentagon, where the growth of the Department of Defense manifested itself in an ever-expanding set of codes and procedures.

Even the word “viral” hints at the fact that today’s environment resembles an organism or an ecosystem—the kind of interconnected system whose crisscrossing pathways allow phenomena to spread.

We have moved from data-poor but fairly predictable settings to data-rich, uncertain ones.

Scientist Brian Walker and writer David Salt, in their book on the subject, describe resilience as “the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and still retain its basic function and structure.”

In a resilience paradigm, managers accept the reality that they will inevitably confront unpredicted threats; rather than erecting strong, specialized defenses, they create systems that aim to roll with the punches, or even benefit from them.

Resilient systems are those that can encounter unforeseen threats and, when necessary, put themselves back together again.

Resilience thinking is the inverse of predictive hubris. It is based in a humble willingness to “know that we don’t know” and “expect the unexpected”—old tropes that often receive lip service but are usually disregarded in favor of optimization.

Robustness is achieved by strengthening parts of the system (the pyramid); resilience is the result of linking elements that allow them to reconfigure or adapt in response to change or damage (the coral reef).

The key lies in shifting our focus from predicting to reconfiguring.

By embracing humility—recognizing the inevitability of surprises and unknowns—and concentrating on systems that can survive and indeed benefit from such surprises, we can triumph over volatility.

But at the same time, the rigid hierarchy and absolute power of officers slows down execution and stifles rapid adaptation by the soldiers closest to the fight.

Soon our whiteboard bore the observation “It Takes a Network to Defeat a Network.” With that, we took the first step toward an entirely new conversation.

“The believer will put his life on the line for you, and for the mission. The other guy won’t.” Purpose affirms trust, trust affirms purpose, and together they forge individuals into a working team.

The crew’s attachment to procedure instead of purpose offers a clear example of the dangers of prizing efficiency over adaptability.

Great teams are less like “awesome machines” than awesome organisms.

This is the difference between “education” and “training.” Medical school is education, first aid is training. Education requires fundamental understanding, which can be used to grasp and respond to a nearly infinite variety of threats; training involves singular actions, which are useful only against anticipated challenges. Education is resilient, training is robust.

The Air Force does a great job training our Airmen, but we lack in the education. Our Airmen aren't prepared for the fluid nature of warfare.

Diverse specialized abilities are essential. We wanted to fuse generalized awareness with specialized expertise.

Legacy accomplishments or bluster might work for a while, but eventually people either produced or faded in importance.

“the best result would come from everyone in the group doing what’s best for themselves . . . and the group.”

“Idea flow” is the ease with which new thoughts can permeate a group.

“when the flow of ideas incorporates a constant stream of outside ideas as well, then the individuals in the community make better decisions than they could on their own.”

Taylor’s contemporary Henri Fayol enumerated the “five functions of management” as “planning, organizing, commanding, coordinating, and controlling.”

The role of the senior leader was no longer that of controlling puppet master, but rather that of an empathetic crafter of culture.

First I needed to shift my focus from moving pieces on the board to shaping the ecosystem.

Creating and leading a truly adaptive organization requires building, leading, and maintaining a culture that is flexible but also durable.

The primary responsibility of the new leader is to maintain a holistic, big-picture view, avoiding a reductionist approach, no matter how tempting micromanaging may be.

Driven by the necessity to keep pace with an agile enemy and a complex environment, we had become adaptable.

a political structure in which decision-making authority is—in some ways—decentralized to the voters, rather than concentrated in a monarchic or oligarchic core, requires a high level of political awareness among the public in order to function.

If people are not educated enough to make informed decisions at the polls, the feedback system on which democracy is premised will not work.

Management has tapped the power of industry, sent men to the moon, saved the lives of the wounded and the sick, and won and lost wars.

This makes management one of the fundamental limfacs to the quest for human progress,