S4P Examines Teamwork 

Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World
by Stanley McChrystal 

Book Summary

Retired U.S. Army General Stanley McChrystal talks about how successful teams are organized using his experience as commander of a special operations group in the Middle East during the War on Terror. He shows how Al Qaeda remained elusive and dangerous to the world’s most formidable military power despite their size and lack of technology and explains how the U.S. military became flexible and transitioned to combat decentralized terrorist groups. McChrystal applies this example to groups across industries in the private sector, government, and medicine and shows how specialized teams with multiple integrated hierarchies prove more flexible, agile, and able to execute than previous iterations of a group or team.

Key Insights

  • Communication is essential to a team’s success. McChrystal speaks frequently about successful teams as networks. While these networks often operate with decentralized management, they exhibit centralized communication that allows teams to operate quickly and efficiently with the necessary information. This structure creates flexible and adaptable teams that can operate effectively without much supervision or oversight. 

  • Attitude, and dedication to the team, accounts for a lot of the work. Navy SEALs training is notorious for its physical brutality, but even cadets who exhibit peak physical capabilities sometimes fail the training. McChrystal suggests that the cadets who regularly succeed at Navy SEAL training enter the program with a desire to contribute rather than a need to prove, and that this attitude of commitment and contribution makes a significant mental difference.  

  • A flexible team can win consistently. McChrystal uses his experience as commander of the Joint Specialized Operations Command (JSOC) as the primary backdrop for illustrating this point. Despite the success the U.S. military found in adherence to a rigid structure previously, terrorist groups continued to outwit and inflict damage on U.S. troops in the Middle East. General McChrystal and his colleagues cite a shift away from traditional structure as a major reason for success in the fight against Al Qaeda. 

Workflow Applications

  • Approach and perspective are often not concrete: We spend a lot of time during projects figuring out what the right approach may be to deliver the best possible product to our client. Throughout these iterations, it’s an important reminder that the first approach may not be the best approach and keeping an open mindset to different ways around the problem may in fact yield a better result. 

  • Flexible teams win more battles: Something great about our team at S4P is that, despite individualized workflows in primary research or secondary research, everyone on our team can fill a lot of different roles. What we often find when folks pitch in to help with a workflow that’s not part of their typical role is that it leads to better understanding of the project from a whole team perspective. Our work is often variable depending on what our client needs, the industry they’re studying, or what economic conditions necessitate, so having a team that is adaptable and flexible enough to navigate nuance consistently from project to project is essential to producing great work.  

  • Teams are here for support: We like to think each of our team members is capable of crushing it individually (because they are), but we also want to constantly remind ourselves that the best work we produce is a product of collaboration. When we start a new project, our whole team answers a list of “foundational questions,” one of which is: “what is success for S4P?” The purpose of this question is to determine what we are hoping to accomplish as a team of talented individuals working together throughout an engagement. Maybe we’re not entering into the next Navy SEALs class, but we want to approach our future projects with a mindset of collective success. 

Discussion Questions

  • What does General McChrystal mean by the title, Team of Teams? What does this look like at S4P?

  • How does management operate as part of a flexible team? Does this change your perspective on organizational management?

  • What are the applications of decentralized management and centralized communication in our workflows?

  • What did you make of the Navy SEAL training example? Is this applicable to professional life? Why or why not?

Memorable Quotes From The Book

  • "Purpose affirms trust, trust affirms purpose, and together they forge individuals into a working team.”

  • "The temptation to lead as a chess-master, controlling each move of the organization, must give way to an approach as a gardener, enabling rather than directing. A gardening approach to leadership is anything but passive. The leader acts as an ‘Eyes-on, Hands-off’ enabler who creates and maintains an ecosystem in which the organization operates.”

  • "There’s likely a place in paradise for people who tried hard, but what really matters is succeeding. If that requires you to change, that’s your mission.”

  • "The crew’s attachment to procedure instead of purpose offers a clear example of the dangers of prizing efficiency over adaptability.”

Additional Resources