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

Team of Teams: New Rules Of Engagement for a Complex World By Stanley A. McChrystal, Tantum Collins, David Silverman, and Chris Fussell Portfolio 290  9781591847489REVIEWED BY CHRISTOPHER J. LAMBGeneral Stanley McChrystal (Ret. and his team have written what is arguably the most important book on national security in the past decade, but it is not likely to be recognized as such in Washington, D.C. Before explaining the book's import and why many in the nation's capital will underestimate its significance, we first need a summary of the book and its contents.The book, Team of Teams: New Rules Of Engagement for A Complex World, is a great read and like McChrystal's previous best seller, My Share of the Task: A Memoir, takes readers on an interesting journey. In My Share of the Task, McChrystal catalogued his time as a former Commander of the Joint Special Operations Command, and then later, as Commander of the International Security Assistance Force and U.S. Forces Afghanistan. In it McChrystal shares his experience and reasoning as he struggles to understand not only the strengths and weaknesses of our adversaries but also those of our own war machine and national security decisionmaking process. One of the many things that make that book compelling is McChrystal's candor about his learning process, which he explains in detail. In short and simple terms, what General McChrystal and his forces did was revolutionize counterterrorism operations with unprecedented levels of cross organizational including interagency collaboration that permitted a real time fusing of intelligence and operations.Team of Teams is a similar journey of discovery, but one that puts McChrystal's extensive military experience in a much broader context. McChrystal says he and his team wanted to know whether the organizational transformation they forged by trial and error in the heat of battle to defeat elusive enemies using age old unconventional tactics and 21st century technology "was a one off occurrence that emerged from the unique factors of post2003 Iraq, or whether it was a microcosm of a broader changed environment that impacts almost every organization in today's world." The authors conclude the latter and wrote the book to explain why.The book is highly readable; erudite without being impenetrable, and full of illustrative examples. The overall structure of the book is logical. It begins by arguing the environment has changed due to social and technological factors; then explains the significance of these changes for organizations and the resultant changes required for successful performance in such an environment; and concludes with leadership lessons for how to make transformed organizations function well. Chapters typically begin with military examples that illustrate a concept, then broaden to include interesting and often fascinating examples from other fields of endeavor and organizational experiences. Each chapter ends with a "recap" shadow box that offers a set of bullets reviewing main points.Most of the military examples in Team of Teams relate how the U.S. Special Operations Command had to dramatically change its organization and culture to achieve the agility necessary to keep pace with the terrorists and insurgent networks in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other countries. Although Team of Teams is sprinkled with examples from military operations, anyone hoping for a historical account of the U.S. military's fight against terrorists and insurgents should read My Share of the Task. Indeed, reading My Share of the Task before Team of Teams will help readers who want to more fully appreciate the difficulty of the task General McChrystal took on and the tremendous impact he had before his career ended in Afghanistan for what this reviewer believes were poorly thought through political reasons.McChrystal was able to retain the traditional strengths of the U.S. Special Operations Command, which include vast resources and superbly trained and equipped forces, while augmenting those capabilities with assets from across the national security architecture.