Have you ever been a member of a team that functions like clockwork? Where everyone did their own jobs, but at the same time they understood and appreciated what every other team member needed to do and how? When you reach that level of teamwork it seems like you have a shared consciousness. In Stanley McChrystal’s book Team of Teams, he describes how he created just this sort of team to combat Al-Qaeda in Iraq in 2003-2006. Faced with a technologically savvy, flexible, decentralised opponent, McChrystal realised that to defeat them, the US war making machine would need to become like them.
The problem he faced was that though he was in charge of a highly effective and efficient fighting force, it was made up of separately trained, managed, and lead units. There were Navy SEALs and Army Special Forces strike teams, US Air Force assets, Predator drones for surveillance, NSA electronic intelligence gathering, CIA global human intelligence assets, plus local intelligence operatives. All of these units and agencies though individually highly effective, were not sharing information quickly enough with each other to combat their agile opponent. Also, their cultural and management silos meant that there were often jealousies and suspicions that created barriers to joint operations.
Eventually McChrystal realised that the information technology world, one his opponent had embraced, was one that he also needed to fully utilise. He established secure communications between all the US military and intelligence agencies. And he got all these separate units to send individuals on secondment to other units to improve trust and understanding. These weren’t low level people who would be missed. McChrystal insisted that they were high performing members of their own unit, whose absence would be missed. To pull his newly forming team of teams together and to provide a sense of shared purpose and focus, he chaired a daily, mandatory briefing, attended live by hundreds of operatives throughout the world.
Putting in place communication infostructure, improving trust, and creating shared focus wasn’t enough. He also had to change his leadership style and that of the senior leaders around him. This meant pushing decision making down the management hierarchy. What he found, and what I have found from other sources too, is that when you have individuals who are well appraised of the bigger situation, this devolving of decision making, not only makes it faster, it improves it too. In the information age gone are the leaders who hoard data and who have a monopoly on intelligence. The result of these changes meant that whilst viewing the scene of a previous night’s raid, a 23 year old intelligence operative was able to call in a special forces strike on two suspect vehicles. This resulted in a senior Al-Qaeda member being apprehended. McChrystal watched the episode unfold, but he didn’t need to authorise the action nor in any other way intervene in its execution.
The sort of organisation he constructed more closely matches how a healthy brain functions. All different regions of the brain can communicate with each other, and access to information is not limited. It is not uncommon for people to create internal barriers within their mind. In Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) we call these parts. They are often created out of significant emotional experiences in the past and are created as a form of protection. But the problem is that they limit the flow of information and as a result limit our ability to access all the behaviours we possess when we do need them. The NLP way to resolve this sort of issue is to have the parts realise that they do have a common purpose, and to share information and resources with each other.
If you are a leader then reading McChrystal’s book Team of Teams may well help you to evolve your leadership style for the information age, becoming more hands off, but more effective. Also, and maybe more importantly, imagine a world where we share information. Where we allow ourselves to understand other people’s perspectives, and where we have a common goal. We are one human family, we have divided ourselves by sex, race, religion, and nationality, but we really are one. Today we have the technology to unite us, let’s stop using it to divide.
“We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.” Martin Luther King, Jr.
