McChrystal Spoke on the Need for a New Kind of Team

 

Monday’s Honored Guest Lecturer Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, a retired four-star general, and former commander of U.S. and International Security Assistance Forces in Afghanistan, and of the Joint Special Operations Command, spoke on the transforming nature of leadership and teams.

His address, “Team of Teams – Rules of Engagement for a Complex World,” discussed how old organizational frameworks with a centralized leadership and silos of responsibility, similar to the standard organization charts that everyone is familiar with, are no longer sufficiently functional and efficient in a changing world. He stated how the world is not just complicated, but complex, and the nature of complexity means that it cannot be predicted and a rapid, adaptive response is necessary.He highlighted his experiences in Iraq where a terrorist group, rather than using a hierarchical organization such as Al Queda, organically developed a highly adaptable and diffuse structure, which allowed them to have their leaders taken out without heavily impacting their ability to grow and rapidly respond. It wasn’t until the U.S. military under his leadership emulated such a diffuse response and geared up their efforts many-fold, that the anti-terrorism effort began to succeed.

“The faster things are changing around you, the more that you have to get everybody synchronized within your organization,” he said.

The cascade through the chain of command just wasn’t fast enough.“We had entered an environment where we had to resynchronize the organization every 24 hours. The entire organization.” So he established a daily conference call not just among the leadership but, instead, “connected everybody, all at the same time. We started by ordering 400 people to be on it and in a very short period of time it became 7,500, and went from 30 minutes to 90 minutes a day,” he said. And despite the fact that some people would call this ‘crazy,’ he said. “I’ll tell you it’s the most efficient thing I’ve ever been a part of in my life. In those 90 minutes, everyone in the organization got shared contextual understanding of what we were doing, what we were trying to do, and what we could do.” Leaders need to create an environment for a new kind of organization to grow.

 

Monday’s Honored Guest Lecturer Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, a retired four-star general, and former commander of U.S. and International Security Assistance Forces in Afghanistan, and of the Joint Special Operations Command, spoke on the transforming nature of leadership and teams.

His address, “Team of Teams – Rules of Engagement for a Complex World,” discussed how old organizational frameworks with a centralized leadership and silos of responsibility, similar to the standard organization charts that everyone is familiar with, are no longer sufficiently functional and efficient in a changing world. He stated how the world is not just complicated, but complex, and the nature of complexity means that it cannot be predicted and a rapid, adaptive response is necessary.He highlighted his experiences in Iraq where a terrorist group, rather than using a hierarchical organization such as Al Queda, organically developed a highly adaptable and diffuse structure, which allowed them to have their leaders taken out without heavily impacting their ability to grow and rapidly respond. It wasn’t until the U.S. military under his leadership emulated such a diffuse response and geared up their efforts many-fold, that the anti-terrorism effort began to succeed.

“The faster things are changing around you, the more that you have to get everybody synchronized within your organization,” he said.

The cascade through the chain of command just wasn’t fast enough.“We had entered an environment where we had to resynchronize the organization every 24 hours. The entire organization.” So he established a daily conference call not just among the leadership but, instead, “connected everybody, all at the same time. We started by ordering 400 people to be on it and in a very short period of time it became 7,500, and went from 30 minutes to 90 minutes a day,” he said. And despite the fact that some people would call this ‘crazy,’ he said. “I’ll tell you it’s the most efficient thing I’ve ever been a part of in my life. In those 90 minutes, everyone in the organization got shared contextual understanding of what we were doing, what we were trying to do, and what we could do.” Leaders need to create an environment for a new kind of organization to grow.

 

Monday’s Honored Guest Lecturer Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, a retired four-star general, and former commander of U.S. and International Security Assistance Forces in Afghanistan, and of the Joint Special Operations Command, spoke on the transforming nature of leadership and teams.

His address, “Team of Teams – Rules of Engagement for a Complex World,” discussed how old organizational frameworks with a centralized leadership and silos of responsibility, similar to the standard organization charts that everyone is familiar with, are no longer sufficiently functional and efficient in a changing world. He stated how the world is not just complicated, but complex, and the nature of complexity means that it cannot be predicted and a rapid, adaptive response is necessary.He highlighted his experiences in Iraq where a terrorist group, rather than using a hierarchical organization such as Al Queda, organically developed a highly adaptable and diffuse structure, which allowed them to have their leaders taken out without heavily impacting their ability to grow and rapidly respond. It wasn’t until the U.S. military under his leadership emulated such a diffuse response and geared up their efforts many-fold, that the anti-terrorism effort began to succeed.

“The faster things are changing around you, the more that you have to get everybody synchronized within your organization,” he said.

The cascade through the chain of command just wasn’t fast enough.“We had entered an environment where we had to resynchronize the organization every 24 hours. The entire organization.” So he established a daily conference call not just among the leadership but, instead, “connected everybody, all at the same time. We started by ordering 400 people to be on it and in a very short period of time it became 7,500, and went from 30 minutes to 90 minutes a day,” he said. And despite the fact that some people would call this ‘crazy,’ he said. “I’ll tell you it’s the most efficient thing I’ve ever been a part of in my life. In those 90 minutes, everyone in the organization got shared contextual understanding of what we were doing, what we were trying to do, and what we could do.” Leaders need to create an environment for a new kind of organization to grow.