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BOOK REVIEW: TEAM OF TEAMS

Team of Teams by General Stanley McChrystal

1. Why This Book?

As a former Royal Marines Commando and hostile security consultant — someone who’s operated in complex, high-threat environments across the globe — I know what it means to lead when there’s no perfect plan and the situation shifts by the minute.

Now, as a leadership coach working with senior leaders across corporate, sporting, and government sectors, I see the same issues playing out in a different uniform: rigid structures, slow decision-making, information silos, and fear of letting go of control.

That’s why Team of Teams landed so hard.

This isn’t just another military-to-boardroom book. It’s a handbook for leadership in complex environments — one built on blood, sweat, systems thinking, and radical adaptation.

What McChrystal achieved in Iraq — transforming an elite but siloed task force into an agile, decentralised network — mirrors what I believe every leader must do today. Whether you're leading in war, on the trading floor, or in your own home, this book offers a clear message:

“If you’re built like a machine, you’ll break under real pressure.”

2. Core Idea (In Plain Terms)

Organisations built for efficiency and control will collapse under the weight of complexity and speed.

To thrive, leaders must shift from managing machines to cultivating ecosystems — replacing command-and-control with shared consciousness and empowered execution.

That means:

Radical transparency
Lateral connections
Decentralised teams
Clear mission intent
Trust before tactics

3. Big Concepts That Hit Home

🧠 Complicated vs Complex

A rocket engine is complicated — lots of moving parts, but ultimately solvable with expertise.

Combat in Iraq, a pandemic, or scaling a business in a volatile market? That’s complex — no fixed formula, everything interconnected, feedback loops everywhere.

Most leaders are still trained for the complicated — but they’re operating in the complex.

⚙️ Taylorism & Reductionism

Frederick Taylor’s “scientific management” created the logic that dominates business today: divide the task, optimise every part, manage through efficiency.

That worked on the factory floor. But it kills adaptability in volatile environments.

McChrystal calls it out: our obsession with tight roles, clear lines, and KPIs often removes the human ability to sense, decide, and adapt.

🌱 Gardener vs Chess Master

You’re not playing chess anymore. You’re not the smartest person on the board moving everyone else.

Leadership today is like being a gardener. You shape the environment, nourish the culture, and let the system grow.

It’s not passive. It’s highly intentional. But it requires humility, trust, and long-term thinking.

🧭 Shared Consciousness & Empowered Execution

At the height of the Iraq insurgency, McChrystal realised no amount of centralised planning could keep up. The enemy was faster, flatter, and more adaptive.

So he introduced Operations & Intelligence (O&I) briefings every day at 09:00 — thousands of people from different units joining in real time. Intel wasn’t hoarded — it was shared.

This transparency built what he calls shared consciousness — everyone had the same context. And once teams had that shared picture, they were trusted to act independently.

They didn’t wait for orders — they moved with confidence.

This was the foundation of what McChrystal calls “organised chaos.”

From the outside, it looked unstructured — thousands of operators across time zones launching missions in parallel, reacting in real time. But from the inside, it was disciplined and intentional — decentralised execution aligned by shared purpose.

“From a distance, it appeared chaotic. Inside, it was a disciplined network — organised chaos.”

This concept — freedom within a framework — is essential. And it applies far beyond the battlefield.

🎲 Game Theory & the Prisoner’s Dilemma

The Prisoner’s Dilemma illustrates how siloed teams act in self-interest — hoarding information, protecting turf, competing rather than collaborating.

And just like in the classic dilemma, this behaviour leads to a lose-lose.

McChrystal references iterated games — where players interact repeatedly. Over time, trust and cooperation emerge as the winning strategy.

Organisations win not by forcing alignment, but by building long-term trust, lateral visibility, and shared goals.

🔀 Top-Down vs Bottom-Up: The Hybrid

Command still has a role — but it’s not about telling everyone what to do. It’s about defining intent.

Leaders provide clarity of purpose (“Here’s what winning looks like”) and then get out of the way. Teams on the ground decide how.

This is the hybrid model:

Top-down clarity
Bottom-up agility
Trust in the middle

4. Why It Matters for Leadership

This is the leadership book for this moment.

Whether you’re in a C-suite or coaching a team, you’re dealing with complexity: shifting markets, changing expectations, hybrid teams, tech disruptions, and global volatility.

Your old tools — tight roles, rigid plans, and slow approvals — won’t cut it.

What McChrystal models is a culture of clarity, speed, and trust. And that’s something any leader can learn, build, and practise.

Leadership is no longer about having the best plan. It’s about building teams that can adapt faster than the problem.

5. Real-World Links

In my world — from elite sport to corporate turnaround — I’ve seen the exact same truths:

High-trust, connected teams move faster
Intent beats micromanagement every time
Cross-team conversations outperform siloed planning

Even in my work in hostile environments, the same logic applied:

Decentralised, skilled teams with shared mission and local autonomy always performed better than those waiting for command.

McChrystal’s experiences also paved the way for how military logic transferred into civilian emergency response.

For example, the mission-critical teams (MCTs) framework — used by elite medical trauma units, aviation crews, and emergency services — mirrors the JSOTF structure. Small, highly trained teams operating in short decision loops, empowered to act on their own judgment within a clear intent.

The playbook for military adaptability is now the backbone of high-stakes civilian response systems.

6. Standout Stories or Moments

✈️ United Airlines Flight 173

On 28 December 1978, United 173 — a DC-8 from New York to Portland — crashed in a Portland suburb after running out of fuel.

Why?

The crew became fixated on a landing gear warning light, circling for nearly an hour to troubleshoot, unaware they were burning through fuel.

Several junior crew members raised concerns about fuel levels, but none challenged the captain strongly enough.

Ten people died.

It was a tragic example of how hierarchy, tunnel vision, and communication breakdown can kill — even in a well-trained team.

It also shows how complicated systems fail when team members don’t feel empowered to speak up.

✈️ United Airlines Flight 232

On 19 July 1989, United 232 — a DC-10 — suffered total hydraulic failure mid-flight after engine debris severed all three independent systems.

There was no flight manual for this scenario.

And yet, the crew saved 185 of 296 lives — by working as a mission-critical team.

They:

Brought a check pilot into the cockpit
Divided responsibilities and decentralised decision-making
Communicated openly under pressure

This success is credited to Crew Resource Management (CRM) — a leadership and teamwork protocol designed after Flight 173 to flatten hierarchy, increase communication, and empower everyone to act.

This is decentralised leadership in real time — shared context, clear roles, empowered execution.

🧱 The Maginot Line

France, post-WWI, built a massive wall of defences to stop another German invasion.

They built it for trench warfare.

Germany simply went around and over it in WWII.

A monument to yesterday’s problem, solved with yesterday’s logic.

How many companies are doing the same today?

🌊 Delta Works (Netherlands)

In response to the 1953 North Sea Flood, which killed over 1,800 people, the Dutch built the Delta Works — an engineering marvel of dams, levees, sluices, and surge barriers designed to keep the sea out.

It worked — until 1995, when disaster nearly struck again. This time, the threat didn’t come from the sea, but from the rivers. After extreme rainfall, the water levels of the Rhine and Meuse rose dangerously, and the sea defences trapped the inland floodwaters, forcing the evacuation of 250,000 people.

The system designed to protect them became the threat.

This triggered a mindset shift — from controlling nature to coexisting with it.

The new national mantra became: “Leven met het water” — Live with the water.

Since then, they’ve:

Restored floodplains
Built floating infrastructure
Designed cities to flex with rising tides

Like organisations, water systems built only for control eventually break. But those designed to flex and adapt survive the storm.

🏥 Boston Marathon Bombing (2013)

When two bombs exploded at the Boston Marathon, dozens of agencies responded.

It looked like chaos — but it wasn’t.

EMS (Emergency Medical Services), police, fire, and hospitals had pre-trained together
Every unit moved autonomously based on shared triage protocols and live capacity updates
Trauma teams operated like combat medics — with the chief surgeon standing at the foot of the bed, scanning the whole patient and scene, while others worked the injury

Every person who reached hospital alive survived.

That’s what happens when you build shared consciousness before the crisis.

To traditional thinkers — the MECE types, the reductionists — this looks like disorder.

But McChrystal calls it what it is: organised chaos.

“It looks messy. But it works.”