Notes on Team of Teams by Stanley McChrystal

I just finished reading Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, Tantum Collins, David Silverman, and Chris Fussell. It was recommended to me a while ago by many people I worked with before.

I had previously enjoyed and gotten a lot out of Chris Fussell's book One Mission, which I guess is sort of a sequel to Team of Teams. Even though I read them "out of order," both books still made a lot of sense. I actually enjoyed One Mission more because I found it to be more tactical and down to earth; Team of Teams seemed to be very heavy on theory and background, which I suppose makes sense since it came first. In Team of Teams, I enjoyed learning more about the history of Scientific Management and Taylor, and it was interesting to learn a lot of the details around how the special ops teams transitioned to a more decentralized and transparent system of management as well as how they set up their physical spaces (SAR, O&I room, etc.).

My notes and main takeaways from the book are below.

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​Foreword
Resilient adaptable agile structure
Trust
Common purpose
Shared awareness
Empowerment of individuals to act

Intro
Founded CrossLead to do consulting 
Not just about efficiency

Part 1 proteus problem

1 sons of proteus
Adaptability better than efficiency

2 clockwork
Taylor scientific management in industrial revolution led to focus on efficiency

3 complicated to complex
Butterfly effect
World less predictable

4 doing the right thing
Resilience important 
Robustness
Antifragility
Efficiency vs effectiveness

Part 2 from many one

5 from command to team
Get a swim buddy. Team building
Crew resource management: better team dynamics and less commanding and more emphasis on trust and team

6 team of teams
Blinks are ruptures in communication or shared context between groups or teams
Need more horizontal integration across org
Moving beyond idea of “everyone else sucks”
Not just about creating one massive team
Relationships between teams to be like between individuals
Needs representation of each unit

Part 3 sharing

7 seeing the system
Need to know fallacy
Bring contractors in house so they know all the info
Systems thinking and engineering
Shared consciousness 

8 brains out of the footlocker
Bloomberg bullpen
Speakerphone for most calls
Add to cc like liberally
Share info until you’re afraid it’s illegal
U shaped table
O&I video calls
6 days per week
Never canceled
9am eastern
Battle rhythm
Lots of q&a in front of everyone 

9 beating the prisoners dilemma
Cooperation sometimes better than competition
Requires everyone to have full info
Exchange programs between units sending people to spend time in other units
L&O
Strong lateral connectivity
Systemic understanding

Part 4 letting go

10 hands off
Empowered execution
Use good judgment

11 leading like a gardener
Visit people and ask thoughtful questions 

12 symmetries