ndupress.ndu.edu SF No. 298 1 

On May 12, 2016, the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) 

announced its markup of the National Defense Authorization Act 

(NDAA) for fiscal year 2017. Committee chairman John McCain (RAZ) stated that the bill “contains the most sweeping reforms of the organization 

of the Department of Defense [DOD] in a generation.”2 The House Armed Services Committee version of the NDAA contained fewer reforms, but the committee emphasized that reform was necessary because “security challenges have 

become more transregional, multi-domain, and multi-functional. . . . U.S. superiority in key warfighting areas is at risk with other nations’ technological advances; 

and . . . [DOD] lacks the agility and adaptability necessary to support timely 

decisionmaking and the rapid fielding of new capabilities.”3

One common reaction to the volume and diversity of reforms in the NDAA 

is confusion about the core problems limiting Pentagon performance. Yet the literature on defense reform, as well as the Senate and House reports accompanying the NDAA, does reveal a common core concern: Pentagon decisionmaking 

is too slow and consensus-based to manage complex security challenges well. 

Consensus decisionmaking is widely understood to yield highly compromised 

products that offer senior leaders suboptimal results.4 Consensus decisionmaking also limits Pentagon headquarters performance in acquisition and mission 

management and, by definition, precludes effective strategy.5

The tendency of the Pentagon to default to consensus decisionmaking that 

protects the equities of its functional components at the expense of better enterprise-wide solutions has been noted for decades. For example, a 1980 study 

found the Pentagon was “strongly vertical and compartmentalized, with little 

horizontal integration and teamwork.”6 Other studies and senior DOD leaders have echoed this concern, claiming the Secretary or Deputy Secretary of 

Cross-Functional Teams in 

Defense Reform: Help or 

Hindrance?

by Christopher J. Lamb

STRATEGIC FORUM

National Defense University

About the Author

Dr. Christopher J. Lamb is a 

Distinguished Research Fellow in the 

Center for Strategic Research, Institute 

for National Strategic Studies, at the 

National Defense University. He is on 

record supporting the use of crossfunctional teams by the Pentagon,1

 and 

national security reform more generally, 

which he reviews in Strategic Forum No. 

293, National Security Reform and the 

2016 Election (NDU Press, March 2016).

Key Points

◆ There is strong bipartisan support for 

Section 941 of the Senate’s version of 

the National Defense Authorization 

Act for 2017, which requires the Pentagon to use cross-functional teams 

(CFTs). CFTs are a popular organizational construct with a reputation for 

delivering better and faster solutions 

for complex and rapidly evolving 

problems.

◆ The Department of Defense reaction 

to the bill has been strongly negative. 

Senior officials argue that Section 

941 would “undermine the authority 

of the Secretary, add bureaucracy, 

and confuse lines of responsibility.”

◆ The Senate’s and Pentagon’s diametrically opposed positions on the 

value of CFTs can be partially reconciled with a better understanding of 

what CFTs are, how cross-functional 

groups have performed to date in 

the Pentagon, and their prerequisites 

for success. This paper argues there 

is strong evidence that CFTs could 

provide impressive benefits if the 

teams were conceived and employed 

correctly.

August 2016

CENTER FOR STRATEGIC RESEARCH
2 SF No. 298 ndupress.ndu.edu

Defense provides the first point of strategic integration. 

Too much of their time is spent refereeing battles among 

subordinate fiefdoms and trying to develop an integrated 

understanding of problems and potential solutions.7

 As 

former Secretary Robert Gates has argued, consensus 

decisions must be worked around because they yield so 

little in the way of useful results.8

The Senate’s defense reform bill directly tackles the 

core problem of consensus decisionmaking, but this fact 

has not attracted much attention. Press attention has focused on provisions such as abolishing the Office of the 

Under Secretary for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics and cutting flag officer positions. In contrast, Section 

941, which takes on the consensus decisionmaking problem, has received little notice in the news.9

 Section 941 

obligates the Secretary of Defense to produce an organizational strategy for improving DOD performance that 

would include cross-functional teams (CFTs); an organizational culture that is more collaborative, innovative, 

team- and results-oriented; and training and personnel 

incentives to support such teams and cultural changes. 

Most of the Section 941 language details how the CFTs 

are to be conceived and employed to overcome consensus 

decisionmaking.

The SASC states that the CFTs—called “mission 

teams” in the NDAA—will rectify shortfalls in the Pentagon’s ability to integrate functional expertise. According to the SASC, the Pentagon currently uses “sequential, hierarchical planning and decision-making processes 

oriented around functional bureaucratic structures that 

are excessively parochial, duplicative, and resistant to integrated operations and solutions.”10 Consequently, most 

decisions involving cross-functional solutions are elevated to senior levels where they consume excessive time 

and leadership attention and lead to “lowest-commondenominator consensus” outcomes rather than “clear, coherent, efficacious courses of action.”11 Consensus-based 

decisionmaking prevents making difficult tradeoffs between competing functional priorities to achieve broader 

objectives, which the SASC asserts has numerous deleterious consequences.12

Secretaries of Defense can sometimes overcome 

these limitations and force a clear, decisive solution, but 

they have limited personal time and typically intervene 

decisively only in a few cases. The need to elevate all major disputed decisions to the Secretary makes Pentagon 

decisionmaking slow and limits effective decisionmaking 

capacity to a handful of critical issues.

According to the SASC, fixing the “strategic integration” shortfall is leftover business from the original 

Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986 reform agenda. The 1985 SASC staff 

report, Defense Organization: The Need for Change, identified “mission integration” as the most important DOD 

organizational problem not only at the operational level 

for combatant commanders but also at the policymaking 

level for the Secretary. At the time it was deemed too 

difficult to correct the mission integration problems at 

the policymaking level, particularly because none of the 

solutions then contemplated seemed compelling.

Now, however, the SASC finds the evidence strongly favors CFTs as a productive solution for inadequate 

strategic integration. Both Chairman McCain and ranking member Jack Reed (D-RI) have publicly emphasized 

the need for Section 941. McCain stated that Section 

941 was necessary to overcome what “former top defense 

official Michèle Flournoy characterizes as ‘the tyranny of 

consensus’ in the Pentagon.” Reed noted the Pentagon’s 

inability “to integrate horizontally to create sound strategies and effectively execute missions acutely affects the 

national security.”

The Executive Branch response to Section 941 

has been negative. The Barack Obama administration 

has threatened a Presidential veto unless Section 941 

and other parts of the Senate’s NDAA are dropped or 

substantially changed.13 The administration also stated 

Section 941 is overly prescriptive and that it would “undermine the authority of the Secretary, add bureaucracy, 

and confuse lines of responsibility.”14 In a letter to Senator McCain on July 13, 2016, Secretary of Defense Ash 

Carter criticized Section 941 as heavily bureaucratic, 

“requiring the issuance of numerous directives, charters, 
ndupress.ndu.edu SF No. 298 3 

metrics and plans, and ignoring the effective manner in 

which the Department uses cross-functional teams today.”15 SASC insistence that the Pentagon use CFTs and 

Pentagon insistence that it already does suggest disagreement about what CFTs are.

CFTs and Their Potential Benefits

Business and management literature describes how 

large, hierarchical organizations with functional divisions became the dominant organizational model during the industrial revolution, only to be substantially 

displaced by “horizontal organization” during the information age. Horizontal organization emphasizes flatter, 

“cross-functional organization designed around end-toend work flows.”16 Most organizations retain functional 

components to provide deep functional expertise and add 

horizontal processes to rapidly integrate those capabilities. Early versions of this type of organizational change, 

often referred to as “matrixed organization,” failed to 

clarify lines of authority and did not work particularly 

well. Subsequently, small empowered decision groups, or 

teams, and especially CFTs became a key element in the 

effective performance of new hybrid organizations.

A decade ago the proliferation of CFTs in the business world could still be called a “quiet revolution,”17 but it 

has now attracted a great deal of attention in business and 

management literature.18 One survey found no less than 

12 comprehensive literature reviews on the topic published between 1982 and 2008.19 Although the collective 

value of the literature is limited by a lack of common definitions and cumulative findings, it is possible to extract 

some key insights about the nature of CFTs. For example, 

some scholars distinguish CFTs from other groups by 

their level of task interdependence, a well-accepted concept developed by James D. Thompson in his classic case 

study on a medium bomber wing.20 Thompson identified 

three different types of task interdependence, the highest 

level being reciprocal interdependence.

Reciprocal interdependence occurs when activities 

require rapid coordination of diverse functional expertise, 

which in turn necessitates “mutual adjustment” among 

the functional specialties on an ongoing basis. The more 

complex and dynamic the problem (and uncertain and 

ambiguous the operating environment), the more mutual adjustment of behaviors is required to successfully 

solve the problem or complete the mission. As new information becomes available, the functional experts (for 

instance, the pilot, co-pilot, navigator, bombardier, gunners) adjust their behaviors repeatedly to create overall 

effects that will best accomplish the mission. In the case 

of a bomber, for example, navigation may be adjusted to 

lessen the chances of detection by the enemy, or avoid 

antiaircraft fires, or improve the accuracy of bombing.

When CFTs work well their ability to quickly make 

tradeoffs among their functional components produces 

several notable advantages. They are better able to keep 

pace with rapidly evolving problems because they make 

decisions faster (a natural consequence of working a 

problem full-time and not having to coordinate with an 

extended hierarchy of management levels). CFTs also 

typically learn faster because they work a single problem 

intensely whereas senior leaders must address a multitude of issues and none of them for a sustained period. 

They relieve the bottleneck otherwise created when information and decisions must flow up through levels of 

functional bureaucracy to the most senior leader (the 

Secretary of Defense). Most importantly, CFTs make 

strategy tailored to the problems they are assigned because they have the flexibility to emphasize different 

functional capabilities to different degrees depending 

on circumstances. All effective strategy requires clear 

choices among competing courses of action that invariably advantage or disadvantage the equities of different 

functional components. If it were otherwise, no strategy 

would be required; all organizational components could 

be left to behave as they like and are inclined to do. Finally, CFTs promote accountability. No one knows who 

is really in charge of a cross-functional mission when all 

the functional bodies of expertise pursue the mission independently. When a CFT is empowered to orchestrate 

those diverse functional capabilities, it is clear who is in 

charge of and accountable for the mission.
4 SF No. 298 ndupress.ndu.edu

Distinguishing CFTs from 

Committees

According to Thompson, when behaving rationally, 

organizations respond to task environments that require 

less demanding levels of task interdependence by forming committees, and they respond to task environments 

that demand the higher form of reciprocal interdependence by forming a “task-force or project grouping” 

(that is, a CFT).21 The norm in government, however, 

is to form committees and not teams. There are lots of 

cross-functional groups in government, but few of them 

ever achieve the level of task interdependence associated with CFTs. Committees meet periodically, share 

some information, and may make recommendations to 

higher authority, but they do not energetically make 

tradeoffs and direct behaviors to accomplish a common 

mission.

Therefore, most government cross-functional groups 

are more accurately labeled cross-functional committees

rather than cross-functional teams. The essential difference is that the members of a committee are expected 

to represent and protect their functional organization’s 

equities. By contrast, CFT members must be willing to 

make decisions on the basis of what will best advance the 

common mission assigned to the team.

Such a transfer of loyalty from the parent organization that controls a civil servant’s career progress to 

a broader mission is uncommon. Most career civil servants feel obliged to respect their immediate chains of 

command and protect their organizations’ equities and 

preferences when told to do so. Seldom are they allowed 

the latitude to commit their organization’s resources and 

activities as they think the situation demands. The inevitable result is least-common-denominator consensus 

decisionmaking. It is much easier to obtain consensus 

approval of a list of objectives or activities that allows all 

the participating organizations to do what they like or 

already planned on doing than it is to agree on a course 

of action that disproportionately promotes some organizational equities at the expense of others in order to 

produce better enterprise-wide results.

The distinction between cross-functional committees and genuine teams helps explain why the Pentagon 

and Congress are talking past one another. The Pentagon 

asserts it already uses CFTs, but it really means crossfunctional committees. For example, the Pentagon cited 

the Joint Requirements Oversight Council ( JROC) as 

an example of a CFT. But the JROC is widely seen as 

a consensus-driven group given to logrolling in order to 

protect individual Service equities. Even favorable reviews of the JROC acknowledge that it “seeks to maximize political support” by coordinating “internal support 

through consensus.”22 Lieutenant General David Deptula, USAF (Ret.), reinforced this view in recent testimony 

to Congress, noting the JROC “and Joint Capabilities 

Integration and Development System process . . . more 

often than not result in ‘lowest common denominator’ 

outcomes.”23 The same could be said of the many other 

cross-functional groups operating in the Pentagon. An 

internal 2006 Pentagon study documented 861 crossfunctional groups attended by Joint Staff officers. Yet 

those officers judged all but a handful as unable to make 

decisions or even share information well.24

The few commentators paying attention to Section 

941 tend to overlook this critical distinction between 

cross-functional committees and teams. For example, 

one major think tank echoes the Pentagon’s claim that 

“there are many cross-functional teams in OSD already,” 

adding that what makes Section 941 controversial is the 

“specificity and the tone” of its language.25 But from the 

SASC point of view, almost all cross-functional groups 

in the Pentagon are mere committees and not CFTs. The 

highly specific language of Section 941 (see table 1) is intended to make that distinction clear. The SASC clearly 

intends for Pentagon CFTs to be empowered with sufficient authority to manage their assigned missions. For 

example, one notable passage in Section 941 states that 

“the leader of a mission team shall have authority to draw 

upon the resources of the functional components of the 

Department and make decisions affecting such functional components.”26 This stipulation and other detailed 

passages dictating how the mission teams will operate 
ndupress.ndu.edu SF No. 298 5 

are clearly intended to ensure the groups work as empowered teams rather than ineffectual committees.

Pentagon Experience with CFTs

The SASC wants the Secretary of Defense to employ 

CFTs rather than cross-functional committees when the 

mission at hand, its complexity, and the level of task interdependence make a CFT appropriate. Anecdotally, there 

is evidence that the Pentagon has used empowered CFTs 

to achieve cross-cutting objectives on rare occasions, and 

the results have been notable (table 1). For example, this 

past year the Pentagon created a cross-functional group 

to examine and respond to recommendations of the 

Military Compensation and Retirement Modernization 

Commission. Under tight time constraints the group distilled inputs from across DOD, the White House, and 

four Federal agencies (Office of Management and Budget 

and the Departments of Labor, Agriculture, and Veterans 

Affairs) to create a well-integrated product that went well 

beyond least-common-denominator consensus output. 

The results were well received in the Pentagon, White 

House, and Congress.

However, earlier attempts to institutionalize CFTs 

in the Pentagon have not gone well. A case in point cited 

Team Mission Example Results

Strategic 

integration

Pentagon 

response to 

MCRMC

Well-integrated product that accepted many of the commission 

recommendations or improved upon them, and received kudos from the 

White House and Congress.*

Strategic 

integration

Efficiencies Task 

Force

Cut $180 billion in overhead costs from the Pentagon budget.†

Operational 

integration

MRAP Task 

Force

Large-scale rapid acquisition effort that saved lives and reduced 

casualties while increasing operational effectiveness.‡

Operational 

integration

JIATF-South Successful and ongoing CFT leading a large interagency and international 

drug-interdiction effort.§

Operational 

integration

Combatant 

Command CFTs

Allowed commands to respond quickly to unexpected missions or tasks 

while working with unfamiliar units from other Services, agencies, and 

nations, “giving the command flexibility to prepare for and wage war 

most effectively.”**

Field-level 

integration

Maritime 

Operations 

Centers

The centers combine staff members “across the traditional Napoleonic 

centers of expertise—intelligence, operations, logistics, etc.—and employ 

them in various working groups, oriented around functional processes or 

timelines.”††

Field-level 

integration

High-Value 

Targeting 

Teams

SOF-led interagency task forces targeting terrorist and insurgent 

leadership deemed a “secret weapon” early in the war on terror.‡‡

Key: CFTs = cross-functional teams; JIATF-South = Joint Interagency Task Force–South; MCRMC = Military Compensation and Retirement 

Modernization Commission; MRAP = mine-resistant ambush protected; SOF = special operations forces:

* Interview with Laura J. Junor, director of the Center for Strategic Research, Institute for National Strategic Studies, at the National Defense 

University.

† Robert M. Gates, A Passion for Leadership: Lessons on Change and Reform from Fifty Years of Public Service (New York: Knopf, 2016).

‡ Ibid.

§ Evan Munsing and Christopher J. Lamb, Joint Interagency Task Force–South: The Best Known, Least Understood Interagency Success, INSS Strategic 

Perspectives 5 (Washington, DC: NDU Press, June 2011).

** John S. Hurley, “Cross-Functional Working Groups: Changing the Way Staffs Are Organized,” Joint Force Quarterly 39 (4th Quarter, October 2005).

†† Margaux Hoar and Dave Zvijac, “Right Ends, Wrong Means: What Congress Is Missing On Defense Reform,” War on the Rocks, August 11, 2016.

‡‡ See Christopher J. Lamb and Evan Munsing, Secret Weapon: High-Value Target Teams as an Organizational Innovation, INSS Strategic 

Perspectives 4 (Washington, DC: NDU Press, March 2011).

Table 1. Anecdotal Evidence for Effective Pentagon CFTs
6 SF No. 298 ndupress.ndu.edu

by the SASC is Secretary of Defense William Perry’s 

1995 creation of Integrated Product Teams (IPTs) to 

improve decisionmaking for acquisition programs. Although there were early reports of IPT success,27 over 

time most observers agree that IPTs function more like 

cross-functional committees than CFTs.28 Another attempt to institutionalize CFTs occurred during the 2005 

Quadrennial Defense Review. A working group recommended empowered CFTs, and the final report language 

suggested leaders wanted to move in that direction:

The Department is continuing to shift from 

stovepiped vertical structures to more transparent 

and horizontally-integrated structures. Just as the 

U.S. forces operate jointly, so too must horizontal 

integration become an organizing principle for 

the Department’s investment and enterprise-wide 

functions. These reforms will not occur overnight, 

and care must be taken not to weaken what works 

effectively during the transition to a more crosscutting approach. However, the complex strategic 

environment of the 21st century demands greater 

integration of forces, organizations and processes, 

and closer synchronization of actions.29

Despite this hopeful assessment, the under secretaries 

who lead major DOD functional organizations objected, 

and nothing came of the recommendations.

Not long thereafter, Secretary Gates arrived on 

the scene and began creating authentic CFTs. Gates 

is “widely considered the best defense secretary of the 

post–World War II era,”30 and sometimes referred to as 

a “master of bureaucracy” because he worked his way up 

from an entry-level position to the highest echelons of 

the national security system.31 In A Passion for Leadership, 

Gates recounts how he “made extensive use of task forces 

to develop options, recommendations, and specific plans 

for implementation.”32 According to Gates, he created 

his first task force—the Wounded Warrior Task Force—

“because so many different elements of the Pentagon were 

involved.” More task forces followed, and they became 

“an essential instrument” for not only “matters relating to 

the wars” but also “other problems in the department as 

well,” including saving billions of dollars in cost-cutting 

efficiencies.

The cross-cutting task forces that Gates used equate 

to the CFTs Congress wants to institutionalize via Section 941 (see table 2). Gates claims his CFTs were necessary to overcome the bureaucracy’s tendency to make 

consensus decisionmaking its priority, which invariably 

produces “pap.” To overcome this tendency Gates states 

that he carefully structured his task forces.33 He chose 

the right leaders, prepared strong charters for the groups, 

and monitored their work to protect and empower them. 

Gates states that the task forces needed protection “to 

keep the bureaucracy from smothering their efforts.” 

They also had to be empowered to “carry out the task” 

and allowed “space to show what they can do.”

Properly configured and employed, Gates argues 

the CFTs promote accountability. When a subordinate 

leader and/or group are empowered, they can be held 

accountable for results. According to Gates, a Secretary 

must “empower individuals to complete specific tasks” 

and “establish milestones to measure progress” but then 

“hold those individuals accountable.” Gates did this. For 

example, he notes he had to change the leadership of his 

intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance task force 

“several times” in order to get results.

Overall, Gates claims the CFTs were enormously 

productive for not only directing the war effort but also 

aiding other headquarters decisionmaking challenges. 

He notes, “With only a couple of exceptions, virtually every task force I appointed improved on and enriched my 

ideas and often expanded the scope of the change.” Gates 

is emphatic about the value of the CFTs, stating, “I want 

to emphasize one last time that I found task forces and 

other ad hoc groups immensely useful, indeed crucial, 

for developing specific proposals for implementation of 

reforms and for tracking progress.” He insists that “any 

leader can use them effectively.”34

Secretary Carter acknowledges that under Gates, 

“task forces became the model of choice,” they were 

successful, and they “injected badly needed agility into 
ndupress.ndu.edu SF No. 298 7 

Issue Gates on Leadership and Reform Section 941

Purpose “Task forces to develop options, 

recommendations, and specific plans for 

implementation.”

“Produce comprehensive and fully 

integrated policies, strategies, plans, 

resourcing, and oversight for the mission 

or other priority output.”

Mandate “I made wide use of task forces and councils, but 

other than periodic updates I spent little time 

with them until their work was complete. The 

important thing . . . is to prepare a strong and 

detailed charter for the work of such groups.”

“Each mission team . . . shall issue a 

charter. . . . The charter and strategy shall 

not go into effect until approved by the 

Secretary.”

Authority “A leader must empower subordinates. . . . A 

leader must be willing to delegate to them the 

authority to carry out plans. One person simply 

cannot effectively oversee implementation 

of significant change that affects multiple 

parts of an organization. . . . The leader must 

decide on the proper course of action and then 

assign responsibility for implementation to his 

subordinates and empower them to carry out 

the task. Give them space to show what they 

can do. Stay out of their hair. . . . Two common 

threads through this book have been the needs 

to listen and to empower subordinates.”

“The Secretary shall delegate to the team 

such decision-making authority as the 

Secretary considers appropriate in order 

to permit the team to execute the strategy 

[approved by the Secretary]. Within the 

delegation provided [by the Secretary] 

the leader of a mission team shall have 

authority to draw upon the resources 

of the functional components of the 

Department and make decisions affecting 

such functional components.”

Strategy “On every matter I thought important, small 

or large, I always took time to devise a specific 

strategy to achieve my goal and to identify 

milestones and deadlines to measure progress.”

“Each mission team . . . shall issue a 

charter and strategy for such team to 

achieve objectives . . . to specify metrics 

for evaluation of the achievement of such 

objectives.”

Leadership “The chair must know the general outcome 

sought and be in full agreement with it. . . . 

The chair of a task force must also be a person 

respected by all those involved and have real 

influence throughout the bureaucracy, because 

part of his job is to sell the recommendations.”

“The Secretary shall . . . designate as 

leader of such team a qualified and 

experienced individual in a general or flag 

officer grade, or a member of the Senior 

Executive Service.”

Supervision “I met with each task force every two weeks for 

status and progress reports. My immediate staff 

was monitoring the efforts even more closely.”

“The Secretary shall designate as leader 

. . . who shall report directly to the 

Secretary.”

Protection “It routinely required my personal involvement 

to keep the bureaucracy from smothering their 

efforts.

“A leader must . . . provide the freedom for 

members to offer options and ideas, incorporate 

what is helpful, and then . . . guide the majority 

to the desired change, even if they come up 

with a different way of implementing it.”

“The Secretary shall ensure . . . team 

members . . . appropriately represent the 

views of their functional components 

without inappropriately pursuing the 

interests of their functional components 

. . . while contributing to the best of their 

ability to the success of the mission team 

. . . the leaders of functional components 

may not interfere in the activities of the 

mission team.”

Table 2. Excerpts from Robert Gates's A Passion for Leadership and Section 941 on CFTs
8 SF No. 298 ndupress.ndu.edu

the Pentagon’s notoriously slow bureaucracy.”35 Among 

other things, according to the Government Accountability Office, task forces “decreased the median time 

needed to locate funding for projects from nine months 

to one month.”36 In reviewing whether Gates’s task 

force approach should be continued, Secretary Carter 

states he decided upon a “hybrid approach that draws 

on the advantages of both models.”37 Off the record, 

others close to the process state that when Gates left 

the Pentagon, his way of doing business with empowered CFTs came to a screeching halt. The Pentagon reverted to its normal practice of using cross-functional 

committees.

Whether Section 941 and its institutionalization 

of CFTs will help or hinder future Secretaries wanting 

to overcome the Pentagon’s tendency to produce leastcommon-denominator consensus decisions remains a 

contentious issue. The Senate believes Section 941 will 

help, but to date the Pentagon argues the opposite, predicting dire consequences if Section 941 becomes law.

Key Points of Contention

The sheer range of direction provided in the more 

than 1,600-page draft National Defense Authorization 

Act for 2017 was sure to raise Pentagon hackles given 

the normal organizational preference for autonomy. 

However, the Pentagon has criticized Section 941 for 

several specific reasons that deserve careful scrutiny. A 

key objection concerns whether Section 941 will assist or 

undermine the Secretary’s control over DOD. 

Does Section 941 Undermine or Empower the Secretary? The Pentagon argues that “Section 941 would 

undermine the Secretary’s ability to create effective 

cross-functional teams, which are already an extremely 

common feature of the way the Department is organized 

today.”38 It also argued that Section 941’s mandate to 

establish at least six CFTs by October 20, 2017, is an 

“inflexible legislative schedule”39 that would “limit the 

Secretary’s ability to use teams.” The distinction between 

CFTs and committees made above is key to understanding how the Pentagon can argue it already commonly 

uses effective CFTs and that the six mandated by Section 

941 would limit the Secretary’s flexibility and undermine 

his ability to create effective CFTs.

If the Pentagon were already using the kind of empowered CFTs envisioned in Section 941, it would not 

find the requirement for six teams problematic. However, 

by citing the Joint Requirements Oversight Council as an 

example of an effective CFT, the Pentagon indicates that 

it means cross-functional committees rather than teams. 

Having to employ six empowered CFTs as mandated by 

Section 941 would supplant ineffective cross-functional 

Structure “The best way to get access to, and use, internal 

talent . . . is to get people from different parts 

of the organization working together outside 

their normal bureaucratic environment. Task 

forces and similar ad hoc groups are silo busters. 

Most bureaucracies . . . are rigid, pyramid-like 

structures in which information is shared with 

those in ever-higher boxes . . . but rarely laterally.”

“The Secretary shall consider 

representatives from [all DOD functional 

organizations] and any other functional 

area the Secretary considers appropriate.”

Membership “An effective leader must structure the groups, 

be involved in the selection of members.”

“The Secretary shall . . . delegate to 

the team leader . . . authority to select 

members of such team.”

Incentives “Empower individuals to complete specific tasks 

. . . and then reward or penalize as appropriate 

and possible.”

The charter and strategy “shall specify 

incentives for the team and its members.”

Table 2. Excerpts from Robert Gates's A Passion for Leadership and Section 941 on CFT, cont.
ndupress.ndu.edu SF No. 298 9 

committees with real CFTs. The Pentagon is profoundly 

uncomfortable with the type of empowered CFTs envisioned in Section 941 and used by Secretary Gates. 

Secretary Carter’s “heartburn” letter to the SASC argues 

that “Enacting the [Section 941] requirements would . . . 

weaken a critical tool that senior leadership utilizes on a 

regular basis to make effective policy decisions by separating cross-functional teams from the leadership structure 

and positioning them to purposely create conflict, rather 

than solutions, for the defense enterprise.”40 What this 

means is that DOD prefers the consensus-driven crossfunctional committees that are controlled by the leaders 

of functional bodies and do not “create conflict.” It does 

not want empowered CFTs, believing their ability to direct functional entities would be conflictual and separate 

the CFTs from “the leadership structure.”

A Section 941 CFT would create friction with 

functional leaders as it pursues its cross-cutting mission, 

but it would not conflict with or be separated from the 

Secretary. The major CFTs called for in Section 941 report to, and derive all their authority from, the Secretary, 

who chooses their missions, approves their charters, and 

specifies the scope of their authorities. The Secretary can 

approve or reject or modify team decisions. Section 941 

CFTs would impinge upon the prerogatives of functional leaders in the Pentagon, but they would not produce the kind of consensus outputs that former Secretary 

Gates warns are meaningless (that is, outcomes where 

“everyone agrees to say collectively what no one believes 

individually”41). In that regard Section 941 CFTs are a 

tool the Secretary could use for overcoming the Pentagon’s “tyranny of consensus.”42 If for some purposes Secretaries prefer cross-functional committees, they could 

simply limit the CFT charter and authority accordingly 

(for example, by clarifying the CFT would be limited 

to making recommendations rather than taking any action). Thus Section 941 would not undermine but rather 

empower the Secretary.

Does Section 941 Clarify or Confuse Lines of Responsibility? Closely related to the issue of whether CFTs 

empower or complicate the Secretary’s management of 

the Pentagon is the question of whether they confuse 

lines of authority. The Pentagon has objected that Section 941 “would give [CFTs] directive authority over 

other elements of the Department and authorize them 

to requisition personnel and resources from other parts 

of the Department without regard to competing mission 

requirements.”43 In Secretary Carter’s letter to Senator 

McCain, he adds that Section 941 “appears to assign 

extensive duties to lower-level officers [that] exceed the 

assigned responsibilities of the senior officials to whom 

they report.” Continuing, Secretary Carter argues:

Mandating that these teams have unchecked 

directive and resourcing authority would 

undermine the Department’s senior leadership and 

create confusion regarding lines of responsibility, a 

particularly dangerous scenario in an institution 

where the chain of command is a central element, 

where the stakes related to national security 

decision making are extraordinarily high, and 

where accountability for actions is meted out by 

Congress and the American people.44

The Pentagon made the same authority and accountability argument when it tried to defeat the original Goldwater-Nichols reforms. It argued empowered combatant 

commanders would undermine the Service chiefs and 

sow confusion about the lines of authority from chiefs to 

their forces in the field. But what Congress did was create 

a new chain of command with new authorities for the 

purpose of joint operations. The issue here is not confused 

lines of authority but decisionmaking legitimacy.

For functional missions, the lines of authority remain clear: from the Secretary to the functional leaders. For cross-functional missions, they are equally clear: 

from the Secretary to the CFTs to the functional leaders. 

Lines of authority are not being confused by Section 941 

but rather clarified. The language in the current version 

of Section 941 invites the Secretary to truly empower 

the CFTs. It specifies the Secretary “shall delegate to 

the team such decision-making authority as the Secretary considers appropriate in order to permit the team to 
10 SF No. 298 ndupress.ndu.edu

execute the strategy;” that within that delegated authority, “the leader of a mission team shall have authority to 

draw upon the resources of the functional components 

of the Department and make decisions affecting such 

functional components”; and that “the leaders of functional components may not interfere in the activities of 

the mission team.”45

This language clarifies rather than confuses responsibility. Currently it is not clear who is in charge of crossfunctional missions other than the Secretary, who does 

not have the time to personally manage the details of all 

cross-functional missions. If the Secretary chose to form 

the type of CFT specified in Section 941 it would be 

crystal clear who had the responsibility and accountability for executing that mission. Currently the Pentagon 

prefers to use consensus-based committees and processes 

for cross-functional missions. They are not empowered 

to get results, so they cannot be held accountable for results. Functional leaders prefer this approach because it 

typically gives them an effective veto over any decision 

they do not like, but that deference to functional equities undermines the Secretary’s ability to manage crossfunctional missions.

What really is in dispute is not whether CFTs 

would confuse lines of responsibility, but rather who 

has a legitimate right to decide how to integrate functional capabilities to accomplish cross-functional missions. There is always a cross-functional integrator at 

the next level of a hierarchical organization. For example, the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy is 

the cross-functional integrator of expertise in his or 

her organization on a range of functions: special operations, regional expertise, security assistance, and so 

forth. The authorities of the functional entities are always impinged on or constrained by whoever performs 

integration duties at the next level up. In the case of the 

Pentagon as a whole, everyone agrees that the Secretary 

has the legitimacy and authority to integrate the efforts 

of his or her under secretaries for cross-cutting missions. No one accuses the Secretary of “eroding lines of 

authority and accountability” when he or she manages 

an overall war effort. In fact, they say just the opposite: 

that the Secretary making the final decisions facilitates 

clear lines of authority over the functional entities and 

sustains accountability.

Thus the real question is whether CFTs, acting on 

the delegated authority of the Secretary, are “legitimate” 

integrators. Put differently, should the Secretary be able 

to delegate his or her integration authorities to a CFT? 

There are only three choices. The Secretary can appoint 

a functional leader as the integrator of a cross-functional 

mission, but that person would be biased by his or her 

current duties and experience and not trusted by other 

functional leaders. Alternatively, the Secretary can give 

the mission to a cross-functional committee, but then 

the mission would not be managed well for the reasons 

already explained. Or finally, the Secretary can give the 

cross-cutting mission to a CFT and its leader, someone 

he or she has chosen and trusts and who would pursue 

the mission undistracted by other duties and knowing 

the Secretary will hold the team accountable for actual results. The Pentagon position seems to suggest the 

Secretary ought to be limited to the first two options, 

whereas the SASC wants the Secretary to also have and 

exercise the third option.

It is important to note that regardless of which 

option a Secretary chooses, the authority of functional 

leaders over their functional domains ostensibly is circumscribed by the need to accomplish the cross-cutting 

mission. So the issue is not erosion of clear lines of authority. The issue is the legitimacy of the integrator. The 

SASC and Section 941 encourage, but do not compel, 

the Secretary to delegate integration authority to empowered CFTs so the department can get better results 

in cross-cutting missions. It also should be noted that the 

authority of the empowered CFTs is not “unchecked” or 

exercised “without regard” to competing requirements; 

CFT authorities are always limited to whatever the Secretary chooses to delegate. Moreover, Section 941 currently has a specific provision that allows the head of a 

functional component to ask the Secretary to review and 

modify decisions made by CFTs.
ndupress.ndu.edu SF No. 298 11 

Couldn’t CFTs Be Delegated Advisory Duties Instead 

of Decision Authority? Informally it has been suggested 

by senior Pentagon leaders that CFTs would be less objectionable if they were merely making recommendations. 

It might seem like reducing the scope of the CFTs to 

generating good advice would be a minor issue. After all, 

the CFTs work for the Secretary and can only exercise 

whatever authority the Secretary delegates to them. If the 

essential value of a CFT is integrating functional expertise, could that not be done in the form of advice to the 

Secretary without the risk that the CFT would impose 

unreasonable decisions on the Pentagon? Many wonder 

what the harm would be in just mandating that the CFTs 

are advisory only and have no directive authority.

One advantage of CFTs is that they can be effective 

against a wide range of missions, ranging from hypothetical competitive strategy exercises to real-world field missions. In the case of the former, the desired output from 

the CFT would be advice. For example, in the famous case 

of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Project Solarium, he 

used three CFTs to devise alternative strategies for dealing with the Soviet menace. The President was directly 

involved in each team’s creation, including the selection of 

members, and ensured each had access to all government 

information. Yet the teams had no directive authority, and 

after they briefed their strategies as advised courses of action, they played no role in strategy implementation.46

However, a CFT would need directive authority 

for most missions and particularly those that require 

real “operational” outcomes such as improving care for 

wounded warriors or rushing better armor or theater intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance to deployed 

forces. When groups know they will be judged on the 

quality of their advice rather than actual outcomes, they 

try to take all views into account and anticipate what 

leaders are willing to accept in the way of complaints or 

friction. Thus advisory groups often err in concentrating 

on what might be received well and inadvertently default 

to what is politically acceptable rather than rigorously 

identifying the problem and exactly what it would take 

to solve or manage it well. Groups that actually have to 

make progress and would be held accountable for doing 

so care far less about the popularity of their decisions and 

far more about whether they make sense.

The current Section 941 language states that the 

Secretary will decide what decisionmaking authority to 

delegate to the CFTs so they can execute their missions, 

which acknowledges the wide range of missions a Secretary might want to assign to CFTs. The more authority the Secretary retains, the more he or she would have 

to be involved in the team’s ongoing activities. In many 

cases the Secretary should be willing to delegate authority to the teams to make decisions both with regard to 

drawing on the resources and information of functional 

components and making substantive decisions regarding 

the formulation and execution of their strategies.47

Does Section 941 Add or Reduce Bureaucracy? The 

Pentagon also complains that Section 941 would result 

“in increased bureaucracy and a larger, less efficient, and 

less responsive DOD organization.” Anyone who has 

worked on the Secretary of Defense’s staff knows the 

work load is crushing, and all the more so given recent 

staff reductions. If the CFTs were a major bureaucratic 

burden, it would be a serious disadvantage. That is not 

likely, however. The number of teams (six) required by 

Section 941 is small, and the specified number of people 

on each team (eight to ten) is also small. Fifty to sixty 

staff members employed on CFTs full time should not 

be a major burden given the overall size of the Pentagon, 

numbering in the tens of thousands.

More to the point, it is important to understand the 

origins of the current staff workload. Much staff time is 

expended in the time-consuming consensus-building 

processes that exhaust staff but yield scant results. Consensus processes enervate not only the rank and file but 

also senior leaders, including the Secretary.48 Section 941 

would obviate the need for activities that masquerade as 

horizontal integration but in reality waste precious time 

and expensive human capital. The Section 941 CFTs are 

empowered to cut through that kind of wasted effort and 

thus would reduce rather than increase the bureaucracy’s 

workload.
12 SF No. 298 ndupress.ndu.edu

In fact, CFTs could make it easier for the Pentagon to absorb previously mandated staff cuts. As has 

been argued in another context, if the Secretary’s staff 

is cut by 20 percent “he will get 20 percent less of what 

he does not want—narrow, stove piped advice—but not 

one iota more of what he truly needs, which is wellintegrated, multifunctional problem assessments and 

solutions.” Put differently, if the Secretary wants a staff 

that is less expensive and also more effective, he must 

reengineer it for collaboration,” which is exactly what 

Section 941 is designed to assist the Secretary in doing.49 As the Pentagon acknowledges, it currently creates numerous cross-functional committees and working groups, but because they are not empowered they 

are typically ineffective and waste personnel and time. 

Fewer of these and more of the empowered Section 941 

CFTs would make DOD leaner and substantially more 

productive.

Micromanagement or Oversight? Informally, senior 

Pentagon officials cite the level of detail in Section 941 as 

egregious micromanagement. Some experienced observers agree. With respect to Section 941 one former senior 

official testified to the House Armed Services Committee that it was “profoundly wrong for the Congress to 

dictate the operational activities within the department” 

and to “say how the secretary of defense should organize 

the internal activity of the department.”50

The distinction between effective oversight and 

micromanagement is subtle and situation-dependent. 

Congress is leery of engineering solutions in organizational structure and usually contents itself with requiring reports to draw attention to performance problems. However, there are historic exceptions such as the 

Goldwater-Nichols Act with its many prescriptions on 

operational and internal Pentagon activities. If, 30 years 

ago, Congress had just given guidance to the Secretary 

of Defense on the need for better joint operations and 

let him figure out how to achieve it, we would still be 

fighting wars by dividing the operational space among 

the Services so they could operate independently of one 

another. To get better joint operations, Congress had to 

direct specifically how DOD would operate to achieve 

that goal.

The question now is whether Section 941 is another 

justifiable historic exception. The SASC believes the 

mandate for effective CFTs is long overdue. Given the 

Pentagon’s history of limited team use and its response 

to Section 941, which suggests confusion about the difference between the teams and cross-functional committees, it is not likely the Pentagon will employ empowered 

CFTs without intervention by Congress. Yet even if it 

appeared that Pentagon leaders understood and were 

willing to embrace CFTs, it would be helpful for Congress to codify the use of empowered teams in law for 

reasons explained in the next section.

Do CFTs Require Great Leaders or Great Organizations? Critics of Section 941 argue that even if there 

is some value to CFTs, their use and management ought 

to be left entirely to the discretion of the Secretary of 

Defense. The argument is that it takes a good or even 

great person to make CFTs work well, and they need as 

much discretion as possible in deciding exactly how they 

should be configured and employed.

The response to this argument is that few Secretaries understand the importance of cross-functional teams, 

much less how to create and manage them well. Secretary 

Gates learned by trial and error the critical importance of 

such groups over the many years of his distinguished career, but otherwise senior DOD leaders have largely ignored their potential. Legislating the use of CFTs would 

ensure the department pays close attention to their productivity. It would also reinforce the legitimacy of the 

teams and increase the willingness of career civil servants 

to support them. Resistance to their use by functional 

leaders would diminish, giving the teams a much better 

chance to succeed.

In short, there is no need to pit great leaders against 

modern organizational structure. Both are needed, along 

with collaborative cultures and other organizational 

practices and attributes that are conducive to achieving 

consistently high performance.
ndupress.ndu.edu SF No. 298 13 

Requirements for Success and 

Common Reasons for Failure

Whether or not Section 941 becomes law, it is important to understand CFT requirements for success. 

Creating and maintaining an effective CFT is not easy. 

They often fail. As both opponents and proponents 

of CFTs note, they are a more sophisticated decision 

mechanism that requires diligent management.51 If the 

Pentagon wants to use CFTs effectively, it needs to understand their requirements for success. Put simply, for 

a cross-functional team to perform its mission well the 

members must transfer their loyalty from protecting their 

parent organizations (and themselves) to accomplishing 

the common mission assigned to the CFT even though 

the best way forward requires sacrificing organizational 

and/or personal preferences. Precisely how a small group 

achieves this transfer of loyalty is much debated and situation dependent, but a few key points stand out.

First, in most large hierarchical organizations with 

structures divided according to major functional areas of 

expertise, it is critical that the CFTs be strongly supported, 

protected, and encouraged by the senior leader. CFTs cannot succeed in the Pentagon without strong support and 

careful oversight from the Secretary. If the Secretary’s attention is directed elsewhere, the functional leaders will attempt to exert control over their personnel on the CFTs 

and reduce them to consensus decisionmaking bodies. This 

was Secretary Gates’s experience, and it is a general rule 

that applies to CFTs in government and the private sector.

Another way CFTs can fail is if the CFT leader is 

perceived as being more loyal to his or her parent organization’s preferences than to accomplishing the team’s 

mission. In such cases the team members will respond 

in kind and work to protect their parent organizations’ 

interests. Enterprises that hope to create effective CFTs 

must ensure that team members are rewarded rather than 

punished for focusing on the interests of the organization 

as a whole and the mission of the CFT instead of the narrower interests of their functional groups.

The opposite extreme is also a problem. The CFT 

leader and team must be willing to make risk tradeoffs 

to advance mission success. However, if they run roughshod over functional organizations creating unnecessarily 

high levels of conflict, the team’s performance would be 

compromised. In this regard it helps to have a disciplined, 

transparent appeal mechanism that ensures functional 

leaders have the opportunity to make their best case to 

the Secretary when the CFT makes an especially controversial decision (which Section 941 provides).

Beyond these general issues of empowerment, a 

number of other best practices ought to be observed. For 

example, most effective CFTs require collocation and 

dedicated personnel working full time. Beyond that, the 

maintenance of trust among the members is generally 

accorded highest priority on effective CFTs. Given the 

fast-evolving problems typically assigned to CFTs, it is 

also important that they are open to learning. To assist 

this process, Section 941 has provisions for learning from 

the CFT experience.

Given the limited space available in this article, it 

is not possible to examine CFT performance factors in 

greater depth. However, it is possible to illustrate the 

types of performance factors that CFT leaders should 

consider by comparing five successful team attributes 

identified by Google with five major dysfunctional attributes of poorly performing teams identified by Patrick 

Lencioni (see table 3).52

The first positive attribute cited by Google is psychological safety. Dr. Amy Edmondson, who testified to the 

SASC on Section 941, is well known for coining this term. 

Edmondson studied medical teams at hospitals to find out 

what distinguished the best performing groups. She assumed top teams made the fewest medication errors but 

discovered they appeared to make more errors. Eventually 

she realized the best teams simply admitted their errors 

whereas others attempted to cover them up. By forthrightly acknowledging mistakes, the teams could more easily 

correct them. Edmondson labeled this team attribute psychological safety and observed that it facilitated a climate 

of openness conducive to high performance.53

Google identified four other factors in its high-performing teams:54
14 SF No. 298 ndupress.ndu.edu

◆ they require dependable, high-quality, “on time” 

performance from the members

◆ they have clear goals, roles, and execution plans

◆ the members are personally invested in the work

◆ the members believe their work fundamentally 

matters; it provides meaning for them.

These Google attributes align nicely with Lencioni’s five 

team dysfunctions once they are slightly reordered (table 3).

Mission team leaders will have to engineer commitment, mission focus, and personal and team accountability, 

and be willing to take risks in order to lead their CFTs 

successfully. These five key CFT performance issues also 

help make it clear why even properly empowered CFTs 

may perform poorly, and more importantly, why a crossfunctional group that gives priority to protecting parent 

organizational equities can never perform at a high level.

Recommendations

The Pentagon ought to drop objections to Section 

941. Its current organizational approach is outdated. 

In today’s world, the premier lines of authority and accountability are for missions and other cross-functional 

outputs. Goldwater-Nichols prescribed (over Pentagon 

objections) such mission authority and accountability for 

combatant commanders at the operational level. Now a 

similar clarification is required at the policymaking level 

where clear authority and accountability for missions and 

other cross-functional outputs do not exist below the Secretary of Defense. Section 941 provides that clarification 

and the tool future Secretaries need to elevate Pentagon 

performance. Without this breakthrough organizational 

change, the Pentagon will continue to struggle to overcome consensus decisionmaking and improve headquarters performance. Current Pentagon leaders should accept 

the tool that Congress is giving the Secretary so that future Secretaries will have a better chance of generating 

the well-integrated cross-functional problem assessments 

and solutions they need.

If the Pentagon continues its objections to Section 

941 and succeeds in defeating the measure, it will be ignoring the lessons of its own experience. Years ago the 

Pentagon put the Project on National Security Reform in 

motion, and one of its major recommendations was the 

use of CFTs by the national security system. That recommendation was informed by the Pentagon’s few but celebrated successes with CFTs, in particular the impressive 

interagency special operations task forces pioneered by 

General Stanley McChrystal, USA (Ret.).55 U.S. Special 

Operations Command learned about such cross-organizational collaboration from the CFT that heads up Joint 

Interagency Task Force–South,56 which works for U.S. 

Southern Command.57 The Central Intelligence Agency 

(CIA) and National Security Agency (NSA) participated 

with and learned the value of CFTs from the intelligencedriven operations pioneered by General McChrystal, Admiral William McRaven, USN (Ret.), and other Pentagon leaders.58 Both the CIA and NSA have decided to 

use CFTs and are currently reorganizing around them. 

And finally, there is the example of Secretary Gates’s experience with CFTs in the Pentagon.

Issue Google’s Positive Attributes* Lencioni’s Dysfunctional Attributes†

Taking risk Psychological safety Absence of trust

Personal accountability Dependability Avoidance of accountability

Mission focus Structure and clarity Fear of conflict

Commitment Meaning of work Lack of commitment

Team accountability Impact of work Inattention to results

Table 3. Five Key Issues in CFT Performance

* Katie Henderson, “Google Says Highly Successful Teams Have This Trait in Common,” BusinessPundit.com, November 22, 2015, available at 

<www.businesspundit.com/google-says-highly-successful-teams-have-this-trait-in-common/>.

† Patrick Lencioni, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2002).
ndupress.ndu.edu SF No. 298 15 

Part-time committees cannot win wars or accomplish other cross-cutting missions, but full-time CFTs 

with empowered leaders can. CFTs are fragile and introduce an element of organizational complexity, but these 

challenges must be met in order to succeed in our complex and dynamic security environment. Implemented 

well, CFTs would generate outstanding performance that 

could constitute an asymmetric advantage for U.S. forces 

in the future. The Pentagon should welcome CFTs rather 

than resist them. It would be ironic indeed if the CIA, 

NSA, and Congress learn from the Pentagon’s experience 

while the Pentagon itself cannot.

Notes 1 Christopher J. Lamb, “Increasing the Effectiveness of Military 

Operations,” testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee 

(SASC), December 10, 2015.

2 U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services, “Senate Armed 

Services Committee Completes Markup of National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017,” press release, May 12, 2016.

3 H. Rept. 114-537, cited in Kathleen J. McInnis, Fact Sheet: 

FY2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) DOD Reform 

Proposals, R44508 (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, 

May 25, 2016), 1.

4 Michèle A. Flournoy, “The Urgent Need for Defense Reform,” 

testimony before the SASC, December 8, 2015.

5 These assertions have been explored in depth previously. See 

Christopher J. Lamb, “Impediments to Acquisition Excellence Illustrated by the MRAP Case,” statement before the House Armed 

Services Committee, U.S. House of Representatives, June 24, 2014; 

Christopher J. Lamb, “Pentagon Strategies,” in Challenges in U.S. 

National Security Policy: A Festschrift Volume Honoring Edward L. (Ted) 

Warner, ed. David Ochmanek and Michael Sulmeyer (Arlington, VA: 

RAND, 2014).

6 James R. Locher III, “Improving Strategic Integration at the 

Department of Defense,” testimony before the SASC, June 28, 2016.

7 Ibid. See also Robert M. Gates, A Passion for Leadership: Lessons 

on Change and Reform from Fifty Years of Public Service (New York: 

Knopf, 2016).

8 Gates, 63.

9 An exception is Mark Cancian, Creating OSD “Mission Teams”

(Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, July 

1, 2016).

10 S. Rept. 144-255, National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal 

Year 2017 Report, 114th Cong., 2nd sess. (2016), 245.

11 Ibid.

12 Ibid., 249–250. The 1985 SASC report on defense reorganization had a longer list of nine deleterious consequences.

13 Joe Gould, “New Veto Threat Targets DoD Reform Proposals,” 

Defense News, June 7, 2016.

14 Statement of Administration Policy: S. 2943—National Defense 

Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017 (Washington, DC: Executive Office of the President, Office of Management and Budget, June 7, 2016).

15 Secretary of Defense Ashton B. Carter to Senator John McCain, July 13, 2016.

16 Frank Ostroff, The Horizontal Organization (Oxford: Oxford 

University Press, 1999), 6.

17 See Glenn M. Parker, Cross-Functional Teams: Working with 

Allies, Enemies and Other Strangers, 2nd ed. (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 

2003), 4, for the definition of cross-functional teams and 8–9 for differentiating factors.

18 For an exception, see Daniel R. Denison, Stuart A. Hart, and 

Joel A. Kahn, “From Chimneys to Cross-Functional Teams: Developing and Validating a Diagnostic Model,” Academy of Management 

Journal 39, no. 4 (August 1996).

19 James Douglas Orton with Christopher J. Lamb, “Interagency 

National Security Teams: Can Social Science Contribute,” PRISM 2, 

no. 2 (March 2011). The 12 meta-reviews are enumerated in the article.

20 James D. Thompson, Organizations in Action: Social Science Bases 

of Administrative Theory (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1967; reprint, New 

Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2003), 61–62.

21 “Organizations with sequential interdependence not contained 

by departmentalization rely on committees to accomplish the remaining coordination. Organizations with reciprocal interdependence not 

contained by departmentalization rely on task-force or project groupings to accomplish the remaining coordination.” See Fred Nichols, 

“The Propositions of James D. Thompson,” 2015, available at <www.

nickols.us/ThompsonPropositions.pdf>.

22 Richard M. Meinhart, “Vice Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of 

Staff and Leadership of the Joint Requirements Oversight Council,” 

Joint Force Quarterly 56 (1st Quarter, January 2010), 151.

23 David A. Deptula, “Revisiting the Roles and Missions of the 

Armed Forces,” statement before the SASC, November 5, 2015.

24 Findings from Quadrennial Defense Review Integrated Process 

Team #3, Roles, Missions, and Organizations Working Group #5. 

See Quadrennial Defense Review (Washington, DC: Department of 

Defense, 2005).

25 Cancian, 2.

26 S. Rept. 144-255, § 941, “Organizational Strategy for the 

Department of Defense.”

27 See Allan D. Hartwell and Joseph E. Nance, “IPTs Provide Big 

Payoffs for JTIDS Milestone III DAB,” Program Manager 26 (November–December 1997), 28–34.

28 The SASC report accompanying Section 941 notes that “over 

time, the prerequisites for successful teams were not observed, so that 

they usually take the form of committees of individuals representing 

and defending the interests of their functional components.” S. Rept. 

144-255, 251.

29 The Quadrennial Defense Review Report (Washington, DC: 

Department of Defense, 2006), 4.

30 Greg Jaffe, review of Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War, by 

Robert M. Gates, Washington Post, January 7, 2014.

31 Timothy B. Clark, “Master of Bureaucracy,” Government Executive, May 1, 2012.

32 Gates, 63–64.

33 Gates made this point in an interview on public radio. See 

“Robert Gates on Leadership and the 2016 Election,” Here and 

Now, January 12, 2016, available at <http://hereandnow.wbur.

org/2016/01/12/robert-gates-leadership>.

34 Ibid.

35 Ashton B. Carter, “Running the Pentagon Right: How to 

Get the Troops What They Need,” Foreign Affairs ( January/February, 

2014), 107.

36 Ibid.

37 Ibid.

38 Statement of Administration Policy: S. 2943, 4.

39 Ibid.
16 SF No. 298 ndupress.ndu.edu

40 Carter to McCain.

41 Gates, 86.

42 Flournoy.

43 Statement of Administration Policy, 5.

44 Carter to McCain.

45 S. Rept. 144-255, § 941, “Organizational Strategy for the 

Department of Defense.”

46 William B. Pickett, ed., George F. Kennan and the Origins of 

Eisenhower’s New Look: An Oral History of Project Solarium, Monograph 

Series No. 1 (Princeton: Princeton Institute for International and 

Regional Studies, 2004).

47 The SASC makes this point in its report accompanying the 

draft bill. The SASC stresses that in many cases the cross-functional 

team leaders should have presumptive authority to draw on the 

resources and information of the functional components of the department and that without such authority the teams will not succeed.

48 Gates notes, “I cannot begin to calculate the time I have wasted 

in meetings—and task forces—as the person in the chair strives to get 

all participants to agree to a single recommendation or point of view.” 

See Gates, 86.

49 Christopher J. Lamb, “Viewpoint: Seeking Production from 

Pentagon Staff Reduction,” Federal Times, October 7, 2013.

50 John J. Hamre, testimony before the House Armed Services 

Committee, July 7, 2016.

51 See Hurley, a proponent of CFTs, and Margaux Hoar and 

Dave Zvijac, opponents of Section 941, on this point. John S. Hurley, 

“Cross-Functional Working Groups: Changing the Way Staffs Are 

Organized,” Joint Force Quarterly 39 (4th Quarter, October 2005); 

Margaux Hoar and Dave Zvijac, “Right Ends, Wrong Means: What 

Congress Is Missing On Defense Reform,” War on the Rocks, August 

11, 2016.

52 Patrick Lencioni, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership 

Fable (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2002).

53 Katie Henderson, “Google Says Highly Successful Teams 

Have This Trait in Common,” BusinessPundit.com, November 22, 2015, 

available at <www.businesspundit.com/google-says-highly-successfulteams-have-this-trait-in-common/>.

54 Julia Rozovsky, “The Five Keys to a Successful Google Team,” 

November 17, 2015, available at <https://rework.withgoogle.com/blog/

five-keys-to-a-successful-google-team/>.

55 Stanley A. McChrystal, My Share of the Task: A Memoir (New 

York: Portfolio, 2013); Stanley A. McChrystal et al., Team of Teams: 

New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World (New York: Portfolio, 

2015). See also “Gen (Ret) Stanley McChrystal, Opening Statement 

on Strategic Integration at the Department of Defense, SASC, June 

28, 2016,” available at <www.armed-services.senate.gov/imo/media/

doc/McChrystal_06-28-16.pdf>.

56 See Christopher J. Lamb and Evan Munsing, Secret Weapon: 

High-Value Target Teams as an Organization Innovation, INSS Strategic 

Perspectives 4 (Washington, DC: NDU Press, March 2011); Richard 

Shultz, Military Innovation in War: It Takes a Learning Organization—

A Case Study of Task Force 714 in Iraq, Joint Special Operations 

University ( JSOU) Report 16-6 (MacDill Air Force Base, FL: JSOU 

Press, 2016).

57 Evan Munsing and Christopher J. Lamb, Joint Interagency Task 

Force–South: The Best Known, Least Understood Interagency Success, INSS 

Strategic Perspectives 5 (Washington, DC: NDU Press, June 2011).

58 Greg Miller, “CIA Plans Major Reorganization and a Focus on 

Digital Espionage,” Washington Post, March 6, 2015; Ellen Nakashima, 

“National Security Agency Plans Major Reorganization,” Washington 

Post, February 2, 2016.

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