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mburnamfink 's review for:
Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World
by David Silverman, Tantum Collins, Stanley McChrystal
Team of Team is one of those odd hybrid books, applying lessons from the military to business and vice versa, structured around General McChrystal's personal memoir of transforming Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) into the globe-spanning terrorist-hunting "sword and shield" that it is today, structured around the elimination of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, commander of Al Qaeda in Iraq.
McChrystal and his co-authors (Yale grad Tantum Collins appears to have done a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of research and actual word-smithing) lay out a fairly simply story. Modern corporations are structured around efficiency, whether through explicitly Taylorist management practices where every motion is clocked and redesigned for speed, or implicitly through bureaucratic silos. Efficient organizations are great, until they interact with complex and chaotic systems, at which point efficiency becomes less important than adaptability. There are plenty of the usual examples from aviation and natural disasters, to make the case that efficiency and resilience are different goals, and that while machines should be efficient, the parts with humans in them need to be resilience.
The JSOC that McChrystal took over was an organization finely tuned to fight the last war, complicated operations along the lines of the Tehran Hostage Rescue debacle in 1980. In Iraq in 2003, they were stepping up operations and raids from 10 a night to 18 a night, but failing to stop the underground growth of Al Qaeda in Iraq. McChrystal realized that his problems were organizational above all else: Vital intelligence went stale as overworked analysts tried to get a handle on a growing backlog of interrogations, documents, and surveillance video. Each individual unit in JSOC was world-class, but the organization was riddle with rivalries and barriers to trust and communication between operations (SEALs, Delta Force, Rangers, etc), analysts, and partner agencies in the intelligence community (CIA, NSA, NRO), not to mention the regular military, the rest of the government, and foreign partners. And above all, no one had a coherent strategic picture.
To fight a netwar, JSOC had to rewire itself. McChrystal institued an open bullpen organization layout at his headquarters in a fortified hanger at Baghdad International Airport. He instituted mandatory daily video conference calls for Operations and Intelligence, at 9 AM EST and 4 PM local time, as Washington was starting its day and operators were moving out for a night of raids. These calls involved thousands of participants, and allowed/required McChrystal to model the deeply inquisitive form of command he saw as necessary to win. JSOC became more flexible and fluid, an organization that made raids based on 'audible' calls and the immediate exploitation of intelligence. Actions went from an average of ~19 a night to over 300. In 2006, they got their man, tracking the elusive Zarqawi through personal networks and killing him with an airstrike.
Some of the stuff in here should be business conventional wisdom: Adaptability is key; architecture is destiny; missions-driven organizations that empower their employees succeed. McChrystal has some very good advice on the importance of asking the right questions, leadership being mostly about setting culture, and that while organizations should be as transparent as possible, leaders MUST MUST MUST resist the urge to micromanage. Delegate, cultivate, and focus on priorities and people rather than processes.
I have a few minor caveats. There's a bit of unwarranted techno-analogizing between computer networks and organization networks. Some of the hard questions about creating a "team of team" are left a little opaque, with that you should check out McChrystal's consulting firm, although the references are discrete and reasonable. Finally, McChrystal elides entirely the major strategic questions surrounding his tenure at JSOC and later in Afghanistan. At best, he achieved medium-level successes that have been submerged in larger strategic reversals. And his habit of 'thinking out loud' in front of a Rolling Stone reporter cost him his command. Anything he could say about the War would be outdated, but if you're looking for that perspective, try another book.
McChrystal and his co-authors (Yale grad Tantum Collins appears to have done a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of research and actual word-smithing) lay out a fairly simply story. Modern corporations are structured around efficiency, whether through explicitly Taylorist management practices where every motion is clocked and redesigned for speed, or implicitly through bureaucratic silos. Efficient organizations are great, until they interact with complex and chaotic systems, at which point efficiency becomes less important than adaptability. There are plenty of the usual examples from aviation and natural disasters, to make the case that efficiency and resilience are different goals, and that while machines should be efficient, the parts with humans in them need to be resilience.
The JSOC that McChrystal took over was an organization finely tuned to fight the last war, complicated operations along the lines of the Tehran Hostage Rescue debacle in 1980. In Iraq in 2003, they were stepping up operations and raids from 10 a night to 18 a night, but failing to stop the underground growth of Al Qaeda in Iraq. McChrystal realized that his problems were organizational above all else: Vital intelligence went stale as overworked analysts tried to get a handle on a growing backlog of interrogations, documents, and surveillance video. Each individual unit in JSOC was world-class, but the organization was riddle with rivalries and barriers to trust and communication between operations (SEALs, Delta Force, Rangers, etc), analysts, and partner agencies in the intelligence community (CIA, NSA, NRO), not to mention the regular military, the rest of the government, and foreign partners. And above all, no one had a coherent strategic picture.
To fight a netwar, JSOC had to rewire itself. McChrystal institued an open bullpen organization layout at his headquarters in a fortified hanger at Baghdad International Airport. He instituted mandatory daily video conference calls for Operations and Intelligence, at 9 AM EST and 4 PM local time, as Washington was starting its day and operators were moving out for a night of raids. These calls involved thousands of participants, and allowed/required McChrystal to model the deeply inquisitive form of command he saw as necessary to win. JSOC became more flexible and fluid, an organization that made raids based on 'audible' calls and the immediate exploitation of intelligence. Actions went from an average of ~19 a night to over 300. In 2006, they got their man, tracking the elusive Zarqawi through personal networks and killing him with an airstrike.
Some of the stuff in here should be business conventional wisdom: Adaptability is key; architecture is destiny; missions-driven organizations that empower their employees succeed. McChrystal has some very good advice on the importance of asking the right questions, leadership being mostly about setting culture, and that while organizations should be as transparent as possible, leaders MUST MUST MUST resist the urge to micromanage. Delegate, cultivate, and focus on priorities and people rather than processes.
I have a few minor caveats. There's a bit of unwarranted techno-analogizing between computer networks and organization networks. Some of the hard questions about creating a "team of team" are left a little opaque, with that you should check out McChrystal's consulting firm, although the references are discrete and reasonable. Finally, McChrystal elides entirely the major strategic questions surrounding his tenure at JSOC and later in Afghanistan. At best, he achieved medium-level successes that have been submerged in larger strategic reversals. And his habit of 'thinking out loud' in front of a Rolling Stone reporter cost him his command. Anything he could say about the War would be outdated, but if you're looking for that perspective, try another book.