Team of Teams

Key Concepts

Taylorism has greatly influenced organizational structure and management approaches, but doesn’t help organizations be adaptive 

“Nevertheless, Taylor’s foundational belief—the notion that an effective enterprise is created by commitment to efficiency, and that the role of the manager is to break things apart and plan “the one best way”—remains relatively unchallenged. The question of the treatment of labor is an argument over the appropriate means to that agreed-upon end. We might recoil today at the brutal consequences of mechanized warfare and the dehumanizing connotations of the assembly line, but the principles that undergird these systems remain firmly embedded in the way organizations of all types approach management and leadership. We still search faithfully for the one best way to do things; we still think of organizational leaders as planners, synchronizers, and coordinators—chess-player strategists responsible for overseeing interlocking troop movements, marketing initiatives, or global supply chains.” (p. 46)

“This type of work was not fundamentally new—just the same old thing at a larger magnitude. Within a few months, we had built our “awesome machine.” But there were warning signs. We were being asked to take on a new role, with unfamiliar tools, in an environment that we didn’t fully comprehend.* While efficient on a scale that the challengers we faced could never have imagined, we were beginning to understand that the new world was not just incrementally different from the old one in a way that could be fixed with a new, yet more intricate set of precise instructions delivered from on high. Our efficient systems provided us with a solid foundation, but they could not bring us victory. This new world required a fundamental rewriting of the rules of the game. In order to win, we would have to set aside many of the lessons that millennia of military procedure and a century of optimized efficiencies had taught us.” (p. 50)

Complex v. complicated

“Being complex is different from being complicated. Things that are complicated may have many parts, but those parts are joined, one to the next, in relatively simple ways: one cog turns, causing the next one to turn as well, and so on. The workings of a complicated device like an internal combustion engine might be confusing, but they ultimately can be broken down into a series of neat and tidy deterministic relationships; by the end, you will be able to predict with relative certainty what will happen when one part of the device is activated or altered. Complexity, on the other hand, occurs when the number of interactions between components increases dramatically—the interdependencies that allow viruses and bank runs to spread; this is where things quickly become unpredictable. Think of the “break” in a pool game—the first forceful strike of the colored balls with the white cue ball. Although there are only sixteen balls on the table and the physics is that of simple mechanics, it is almost impossible to predict where everything will end up.” (p. 57)

“This broad spectrum of possible outcomes throws a wrench into the conceptual clockwork. In the Task Force, as in most large organizations, our actions were the product of our planning, and our planning was predicated on our ability to predict. (Or more precisely, our perception of our ability to predict—our belief that we understood the workings of the clock.) But by 2004 our battlefield behaved a lot more like the capricious movements of a cold front than like the steady trajectory of Halley’s Comet.” (p. 59)

Big data is attractive, but only goes so far to solve adaptive challenges

“Data-rich records can be wonderful for explaining how complex phenomena happened and how they might happen, but they can’t tell us when and where they will happen. For instance, data on the spread of a virus can provide an insight into how contagion patterns look in our networked world, but that is very different from knowing exactly where the next outbreak will occur, who precisely will end up getting sick, and where they will go next. Gaining understanding is not always the same as predicting.” (p. 72)

“Similarly, management thinker Gary Hamel writes that companies now find themselves in “ecosystems” and “value webs” over which they exert almost no control, giving them little ability to predict or plan their own destinies. In such settings, the ritual of strategic planning, which assumes “the future will be more or less like the present,” is more hindrance than help. This was exactly what we were finding with the institutional strictures—planning routines and an organizational structure and culture firmly embedded in the notion of predictive mastery—that governed the Task Force. Our complicated solutions were flailing in a newly complex environment. The inevitable outcome of this approach is perhaps best summarized by Henry Mintzberg, author of The Rise and Fall of Strategic Planning: ‘Setting oneself on a predetermined course in unknown waters is the perfect way to sail straight into an iceberg.’” (p. 74)

Moving from robustness to resilience

“Robustness is achieved by strengthening parts of the system (the pyramid); resilience is the result of linking elements that allow them to reconfigure or adapt in response to change or damage (the coral reef). Our approach to many environments—from the factory floor to the battlefield—has concentrated on building and hardening robust structures to withstand specific anticipated dangers. But all those environments are, as we discussed in the previous chapter, increasingly susceptible to unforeseen and unforeseeable disruptions. To survive them, we need to become both robust and resilient.” (p. 80)

“The key lies in shifting our focus from predicting to reconfiguring. By embracing humility—recognizing the inevitability of surprises and unknowns—and concentrating on systems that can survive and indeed benefit from such surprises, we can triumph over volatility. As Zolli puts it, ‘if we cannot control the volatile tides of change, we can learn to build better boats.’” (p. 80)

Creating a more adaptable team of teams with shared consciousness

“Picture a MECE sports team, and you’d have a ridiculous spectacle: players ignoring one another and the ball, their eyes fixed on the coach, awaiting precise orders. A coach might be able to devise a more efficient way to execute any given play than whatever it is the players would improvise in the heat of the game. But the coach has no way of predicting exactly how the game will develop, and no way of effectively communicating instructions in real time fast enough to be useful to all players simultaneously (even if she could conceptualize it on the instant). The team is better off with the cohesive ability to improvise as a unit, relying on both specialization (goalies mostly stay in goal; forwards mostly don’t) and overlapping responsibilities (each can do some of the others’ jobs in a pinch), as well as such familiarity with one another’s habits and responses that they can anticipate instinctively one another’s responses.” (p. 119)

“Where org charts are tidy and MECE, teams are messy. Connections crisscross all over the place, and there is lots of overlap: team members track and travel through not only their own specialized territory but often the entire playing field. Trust and purpose are inefficient: getting to know your colleagues intimately and acquiring a whole-system overview are big time sinks; the sharing of responsibilities generates redundancy. But this overlap and redundancy—these inefficiencies—are precisely what imbues teams with high-level adaptability and efficacy. Great teams are less like “awesome machines” than awesome organisms.” (p. 120)

“We didn’t need every member of the Task Force to know everyone else; we just needed everyone to know someone on every team, so that when they thought about, or had to work with, the unit that bunked next door or their intelligence counterparts in D.C., they envisioned a friendly face rather than a competitive rival.” (p. 129)

“Over the decades, America’s military and intelligence institutions have developed intricate matrices of clearances and silos to ensure that, as a Hollywood general might put it, people don’t know what they don’t need to know. In early 2003, when I served as the vice director for operations on the Pentagon’s Joint Staff, the United States Central Command (CENTCOM)* initially prohibited the Pentagon staffs from viewing their internal Web site out of a (common) fear of giving “higher headquarters” visibility into unfinalized planning products. Such absurdities reflect the truth that most organizations are more concerned with how best to control information than how best to share it.” (p. 140)

“The problem is that the logic of “need to know” depends on the assumption that somebody—some manager or algorithm or bureaucracy—actually knows who does and does not need to know which material.” (p. 141)

Transforming the team meeting to build connections across the team

“The most critical element of our transformation—the heart muscle of the organism we sought to create and the pulse by which it would live or die—was our Operations and Intelligence brief. The O&I, as it was commonly called, is standard military practice: a regular meeting held by the leadership of a given command to integrate everything the command is doing with everything it knows.” (p. 164)

“The critical first step was to share our own information widely and be generous with our own people and resources. From there, we hoped that the human relationships we built through that generosity would carry the day.” (p. 167)

“Our leadership learned, over time, to use this forum not as a stereotypical military briefing where junior personnel give nicely rehearsed updates and hope for no questions. Instead, it was an interactive discussion. If an individual had a four-minute slot, the “update” portion would be covered in the first sixty seconds, and the remainder of the time would be filled with open-ended conversation between the briefer and senior leadership (and potentially anyone else on the network, if they saw a critical point to be made). Instead of black-and-white lines of questioning (“How many x?”), our dialogue became interactive and broad (“Why are you thinking x?”). The responses to this type of interaction created new insights, deepened the group’s understanding of a complex issue, and highlighted the deep levels of understanding of our personnel around the globe. Most important, it allowed all members of the organization to see problems being solved in real time and to understand the perspective of the senior leadership team. This gave them the skills and confidence to solve their own similar problems without the need for further guidance or clarification. By having thousands of personnel listen to these daily interactions, we saved an incalculable amount of time that was no longer needed to seek clarification or permission.” (p. 168)

“Only with deep, empathetic familiarity could these different units function so seamlessly together—put their lives on the line for one another. What on the surface seemed like an inefficient use of time in fact laid the foundation for our adaptability.” (p. 187)

Pushing down decision-making improve speed and quality

“I began to reconsider the nature of my role as a leader. The wait for my approval was not resulting in any better decisions, and our priority should be reaching the best possible decision that could be made in a time frame that allowed it to be relevant. I came to realize that, in normal cases, I did not add tremendous value, so I changed the process. I communicated across the command my thought process on decisions like airstrikes, and told them to make the call. Whoever made the decision, I was always ultimately responsible, and more often than not those below me reached the same conclusion I would have, but this way our team would be empowered to do what was needed.” (p. 209)

“The practice of relaying decisions up and down the chain of command is premised on the assumption that the organization has the time to do so, or, more accurately, that the cost of the delay is less than the cost of the errors produced by removing a supervisor. In 2004 this assumption no longer held. The risks of acting too slowly were higher than the risks of letting competent people make judgment calls. We concluded that we would be better served by accepting the 70 percent solution today, rather than satisfying protocol and getting the 90 percent solution tomorrow (in the military you learn that you will never have time for the 100 percent solution).” (p. 209)

“Like the directors of Ritz-Carlton and Nordstrom, I found that, by ignoring the Perry Principle and containing my desire to micromanage, I flipped a switch in my subordinates: they had always taken things seriously, but now they acquired a gravitas that they had not had before. It is one thing to look at a situation and make a recommendation to a senior leader about whether or not to authorize a strike. Psychologically, it is an entirely different experience to be charged with making that decision. Junior officers, instead of handing the decision to me and providing guidance, were now entrusted with the responsibility of a decision that was, quite literally, often a matter of life and death.” (p. 214)

“On the whole, our initiative—which we call “empowered execution”*—met with tremendous success. Decisions came more quickly, critical in a fight where speed was essential to capturing enemies and preventing attacks. More important, and more surprising, we found that, even as speed increased and we pushed authority further down, the quality of decisions actually went up. We had decentralized on the belief that the 70 percent solution today would be better than the 90 percent solution tomorrow. But we found our estimates were backward—we were getting the 90 percent solution today instead of the 70 percent solution tomorrow.” (p. 214)

“Our teams were crafted to be chess pieces with well-honed, predictable capabilities. Our leaders, including me, had been trained as chess masters, and we hoped to display the talent and skill of masters. We felt responsible, and harbored a corresponding need to be in control, but as we were learning, we actually needed to let go.” (p. 224)

From heroic leader to humble gardener

“Although I recognized its necessity, the mental transition from heroic leader to humble gardener was not a comfortable one. From that first day at West Point I’d been trained to develop personal expectations and behaviors that reflected professional competence, decisiveness, and self-confidence. If adequately informed, I expected myself to have the right answers and deliver them to my force with assurance. Failure to do that would reflect weakness and invite doubts about my relevance. I felt intense pressure to fulfill the role of chess master for which I had spent a lifetime preparing. But the choice had been made for me. I had to adapt to the new reality and reshape myself as conditions were forcing us to reshape our force. And so I stopped playing chess, and I became a gardener. But what did gardening actually entail? First I needed to shift my focus from moving pieces on the board to shaping the ecosystem.” (p. 225)

“‘Thank you’ became my most important phrase, interest and enthusiasm my most powerful behaviors. In a small room with trusted advisers, frustration or anger can be put into context and digested. But the daily O&I was large enough that petulance or sarcasm could be disastrous. More than anything else, the O&I demanded self-discipline, and I found it exhausting. But it was an extraordinary opportunity to lead by example.” (p. 228)

Quotables

“Before we begin, a thought. There’s a temptation for all of us to blame failures on factors outside our control: “the enemy was ten feet tall,” “we weren’t treated fairly,” or “it was an impossible task to begin with.” There is also comfort in “doubling down” on proven processes, regardless of their efficacy. Few of us are criticized if we faithfully do what has worked many times before. But feeling comfortable or dodging criticism should not be our measure of success. 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.” (p. 8)

“The models of organizational success that dominated the twentieth century have their roots in the industrial revolution and, simply put, the world has changed. The pursuit of “efficiency”—getting the most with the least investment of energy, time, or money—was once a laudable goal, but being effective in today’s world is less a question of optimizing for a known (and relatively stable) set of variables than responsiveness to a constantly shifting environment. Adaptability, not efficiency, must become our central competency.” (p. 20)

“In 2004, as we planned clockwork raids designed to make the most of every drop of fuel, we were manning a managerial Maginot Line: our extraordinarily efficient procedures and plans were well crafted and necessary, but not sufficient.” (p. 52)

“We were stronger, more efficient, more robust. But AQI was agile and resilient. In complex environments, resilience often spells success, while even the most brilliantly engineered fixed solutions are often insufficient or counterproductive.” (p. 76)

“We had built an “awesome machine”—an efficient military assembly line—but it was too slow, too static, and too specialized—too efficient—to deal with that volatility. It was the equivalent of the Delta Works or the Maginot Line: robust at doing specific, long-planned-for things, but incapable of swift, effective responses to the unexpected. We were robust, but not resilient. When we realized that AQI was outrunning us, we did what most large organizations do when they find themselves falling behind the competition: we worked harder. We deployed more resources, we put more people to work, and we strove to create ever-greater efficiency within the existing operating model. Like obnoxious tourists trying to make themselves understood in a foreign country by continuing to speak their native tongue louder and louder, we were raising the volume to no good end.” (p. 81)

“A fighting force with good individual training, a solid handbook, and a sound strategy can execute a plan efficiently, and as long as the environment remains fairly static, odds of success are high. But a team fused by trust and purpose is much more potent. Such a group can improvise a coordinated response to dynamic, real-time developments.” (p. 97)

“The trainees who make it through BUD/S believe in the cause. And that matters—team members placing their lives at risk want to serve alongside committed patriots, not bodybuilders who signed up because they saw an opportunity for personal growth. As Ruiz puts it, “The believer will put his life on the line for you, and for the mission. The other guy won’t.” Purpose affirms trust, trust affirms purpose, and together they forge individuals into a working team.” (p. 100)

“Mulally’s belief in the universal utility of rejecting silos and embracing interdependence is backed up by Sandy Pentland, an MIT professor who studies the effects of information flow on organizations and communities. Looking at very large data sets, Pentland has found that sharing information and creating strong horizontal relationships improves the effectiveness of everything from businesses to governments to cities. His research suggests that the collective intelligence of groups and communities has little to do with the intelligence of their individual members, and much more to do with the connections between them. ‘The best ideas,’ he writes, ‘come from careful and continuous social exploration . . . it is the idea flow within a community that builds the intelligence that makes it successful.’” (p. 196)

“Though I never caught anyone, I suspect that eye rolling was common when I referred time and again to the Visible Man during the Task Force video teleconferences. I told subordinates that if they provided me with sufficient, clear information about their operations, I would be content to watch from a distance. If they did not, I would describe in graphic terms the “exploratory surgery” necessary to gain the situational awareness I needed. They were free to make all the decisions they wanted—as long as they provided the visibility that, under shared consciousness, had become the standard.” (p. 217)

“I later used a specific question when talking to junior officers and sergeants in small bases in Afghanistan: “If I told you that you weren’t going home until we win—what would you do differently?” At first they would chuckle, assuming I was joking, but soon realized I wasn’t. At that point most became very thoughtful. If they were forced to operate on a metric of task completion, rather than watching the clock until they went home, the implications would be significant. Almost all were good soldiers and leaders, but they had been shaped into thinking in terms of their tour of duty, a time horizon that rarely predicted successful mission completion. Once they recalculated, their answers were impressive. Most adjusted their approach to take a longer view of solving the problem. You might expect them to seek a quicker solution and an earlier ticket home. But they were experienced enough to know that real solutions demand the long view—simple fixes are illusory. Although I couldn’t change the troop rotation policy, as I left, I’d ask each soldier to execute his or her duties with that mind-set.” (p. 230)