General McChrystal’s task force was charged with taking on Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) in 2004. Wedding what he calls “shared consciousness” with “empowered execution” yields McChrystal’s organizational goal of adaptability, and these two must exist together for an organization to be effective (p. Organizations that become more transparent and organic in their operations increase in speed and precision. Rather than a top-down, controlling approach, leaders are wise to take the approach of leading “as a gardener, enabling rather than directing.” McChrystal describes the leader as a person who “creates and maintains an ecosystem” (p. Do not unnecessarily slow things down with a need to rubber stamp(pp. Train and empower your people to make decisions and execute. “Embedding and liaison programs create strong lateral ties” and, from that, trust (p. To encourage the collaboration and sharing necessary between teams, you need to build trust. “Physical spaces and established processes” can throw up “barriers to information sharing.” McChrystal established a virtual operations and intelligence meeting that ran daily rather than weekly and was synchronized to work with schedules across time zones (p. Rethink how you can physically and procedurally nurture transparency and information sharing. It requires a “disciplined effort” to make organizations engage in radical levels of information sharing and transparency, and all the members have to be well-informed about the entire system (p. When fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq or confronting other complex threats and challenges, the solution is a “‘team of teams’ – an organization within which the relationships between constituent teams resembled those between individuals on single teams: teams that had traditionally resided in separate silos would now have to become fused to one another via trust and purpose” (p. This method makes use of sharing trust and purpose and a “bottom-up” instead of a “top-down” style (p. A team versus command approach allows for better adaptability in situations involving tactical complexity. In complex environments, adaptability and resilience are better goals than efficiency (p. Our “interdependent and fast-paced world” has become more complex, and old approaches relying on prediction and planning are less effective (p. While the old, tried and true approach of using “known, repeatable processes” in running organizations remains valuable in some scenarios, a new generation of threats requires a different approach (p. To effectively face Al Qaeda in Iraq’s network, the military had to change “the internal architecture and culture” of their force (p. Proteus was a shape-shifting god whom the Greeks were only able to defeat by themselves becoming fluid and flexible in battle.

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

If that requires you to change, that’s your mission” (p.

Fordism/Taylorism is a great reductionist philosophy for a complicated (or closed) system as it increases efficiency.“There’s likely a place in paradise for people who tried hard, but what really matters is succeeding.However, he warns that this approach is risky, and should only be done once ‘shared consciousness’ is achieved.Īmazon link – Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex WorldĪdditional material in the book is also worth note. Stanley describes his leadership approach as ‘eyes on, hands off’. The most important knowledge I take from this book, is his approach to leadership. He also uses several powerful non-military examples in the book. Stanley argues that his approach of shared conscious and empowered leaders is as the relevant in the VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex & ambiguous) world of business as it is in the deserts and mountains of the middle east. The results and impact speak for themselves. The book then charts the evolution of the Task Force into an agile decentralised, empowered organisation. He inherits a slow, top-down, bureaucratic organisation that is failing. Stanley pointedly highlights the initial problems when arrives. His new book ‘Team of Teams’ charts his experience commanding the Special Operations Task Force in Iraq. General Stanley McChristal has a phenomenal reputation amongst veterans.

Eyes on hands off leadership