Team of Teams: Post #3 Trust and Communcation

Teams, Trust, and Communication. For teams to be effective, there must be a sense of trust among team members as well as a shared common purpose. Moreover, successful enterprises must be made up of a “team of teams,” which also shares trust between and among teams as well as an enterprise-wide sense of purpose and meaning. Trust is built by collaboration and communication, not on competition between members of a single team or between teams. When team members and teams of teams have high trust, they’re more likely to share resources in service of the greater good. On the other hand, rigid command structures tend to lead to “tribalism” and distrust.

Team of Teams: Post #2--Efficient, not Effective?

Efficient is Not Always Effective. The authors dedicate a lot of space to Frederick Taylor’s reductionist theories of efficiency, which argue for step-by-step processes for products and service that are designed for maximum optimization and efficiency. Designed around reducing workers to near-robots with little say in how things get done, Taylor’s theories dominated at one time both industry and the military and in its day met a need to solve complicated problems; however, those theories were less effective years later when engaged workers and adaptive thinking were required for highly complex problems and in more unpredictable circumstances.

Team of Teams: Post #1--Overview

Overview. General Stanley McChrystal and his author team tell us that to beat an agile foe
in an uncertain environment, an efficient team is never as effective as an adaptive one. Restructuring the Joint Special Operations Command from a classic command-and-control military management style to a more team-based, team of teams, McChrystal was far better able to fight the allusive al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) under the notorious leadership of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Forsaking the Frederick Taylor reductionist paradigm of always being efficient and effective, at the expense of being adaptive, even entrepreneurial,  McChrystal remade his command into a team of teams—adaptive, trustful and with common purpose—one that communicated well, asked questions, and figured out how to be successful in an uncertain environment.

Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World by General Stanley McChrystal, Tantum Collins, David Silverman, Chris Fussell (Kindle Edition, Penguin, 2015), Reviewed by Steve Gladis, August 2015).