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What it argues
Team of Teams is General Stanley McChrystal's account of how he restructured the Joint Special Operations Task Force in Iraq to fight an enemy — Al-Qaeda in Iraq — that was organized in ways the conventional military hierarchy was too slow to counter. The book is an argument about organizational design: that traditional hierarchical command structures optimized for efficiency are poorly suited to complex, rapidly evolving environments, and that organizations facing those environments must restructure around trust, shared consciousness, and distributed authority.
The key problem was speed. Al-Qaeda in Iraq was a networked organization with local cells making autonomous decisions at high speed. The Task Force was fighting like a machine: efficient at executing planned operations, terrible at sensing and responding to events that didn't fit the plan. Decision authority was concentrated at the top, information had to travel up before decisions came back down, and by the time the hierarchy had processed a situation, the situation had changed.
What it gets right
- 1.
Traditional hierarchies optimized for efficiency fail in complex environments because they're too slow: information must travel up before decisions come back down, and the environment changes faster than the hierarchy can process it.
- 2.
A 'team of teams' is not a single big team. It's an organization where every unit has the trust and shared understanding of a small team, and where information and authority flow freely across units.
- 3.
Shared consciousness — a common operating picture understood by everyone — enables distributed authority. People make better local decisions when they understand the broader strategic context.
What it covers
Who wrote it
General Stanley McChrystal served in the United States Army for thirty-four years, retiring in 2010 after commanding the Joint Special Operations Command and serving as commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan. He founded the McChrystal Group, a leadership consulting firm, after retiring from military service. Team of Teams was co-written with Tantum Collins, David Silverman, and Chris Fussell. McChrystal is also the author of My Share of the Task, his personal memoir, and Leaders, a study of historical leadership.
