Imagine erasing everything you know about leadership and organizations and starting from scratch.
How would you build a brand new company (using the same people) to focus on the results you want to achieve?
American General Stanley McChrystal faced this dilemma when he took command of the Joint Special Operations Task Force in Iraq. His mission? Eliminate Al Qaeda. He led some of the most elite military units in the world, equipped with cutting-edge intelligence and combat technologies. Yet, they were losing.
Al Qaeda was fast, decentralized, and resilient. Even when its leaders were killed, it could rapidly reconfigure and strike again.
McChrystal’s task force, in contrast, was built for predictability, not agility. It followed a rigid hierarchy, siloed specialized teams, and strict security protocols—a structure optimized for efficiency.
While highly disciplined, these teams operated in isolation, focusing on perfecting their tasks rather than adapting to the bigger strategic picture.
Bureaucratic procedures dictated long chains of approvals that slowed down information sharing.
For example, after a successful raid, special forces operatives would gather intelligence such as documents, laptops, and hard drives and transport them by helicopter to a storage site. Days later, intelligence analysts would finally examine them, often too late to act. Worse, the analysts had no direct interaction with the operatives, leaving them without crucial context to make sense of the data.
The Big Idea: Team of Teams
As General McChrystal studied the patterns of Al Qaeda’s operations, he realized his task force couldn’t defeat a fast, decentralized enemy using a rigid command-and-control structure. To succeed, his organization needed to evolve into an integrated network that could rapidly adapt to complexity and change in the environment.
McChrystal needed to shake traditional beliefs about power and control and reconfigure relationships between the 7,000 people who composed the organization.
How He Made It Work:
Established a Common Purpose – Aligning every team around a shared mission.
Built Trust Through Stronger Relationships – Fostering deep collaboration across units.
Created Shared Context & Systemic Thinking – Ensuring information flowed freely across teams.
Decentralized Decisions to Empower Execution – Enabling teams to quickly act autonomously.
By shifting from hierarchical control to empowered execution, Team of Teams became a model for navigating complexity, improving agility, and achieving superior results through cross-functional collaboration.
In the following paragraphs, I will share more details about the above steps, however, I do recommend reading Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World in its entirety. The writing is engaging, there is a deeper discussion about the details of this organizational transformation and its outcomes, as well as interesting stories from other organizations that tackled similar challenges.
1. Establish common purpose
In this case, the general articulated “Defeat Al Qaeda” as the common goal that unified all members of the task force. Each team contributed within its area of expertise while collaborating across units.
In companies, frameworks such as OKR (Objectives & Key Results) serve a similar role, ensuring alignment and collective focus.
2. Build trust through strengthening relationships
Special forces units were highly effective and close-knit, having spent years training and fighting together. McChrystal wanted to break down silos and create similar relationships between teams on the task force. His goal was for every team member to know at least one person on every other team, he or she could reach out to when needed.
He achieved this by:
Embedding individuals in other teams for six months, similar to corporate job rotations, helped members understand interdependencies and their role in the bigger picture.
Liaisons as Culture Ambassadors: Instead of assigning random representatives, McChrystal encouraged teams to select their best people to engage with others—creating positive impressions and fostering mutual learning.
3. Create contextual awareness by radical information sharing
McChrystal took several steps to break down silos and prioritize information sharing over secrecy, asserting that the benefits outweighed the risk of intelligence leaks:
Shared Dashboards: Integrated technology ensured real-time access to intelligence and insights.
Daily Video Briefings: These grew to 7,000+ participants, connecting military, intelligence, and government teams for real-time operational updates.
Open Dialogue Culture: Rank and hierarchy no longer dictated who could ask questions. Anyone with critical insights could contribute.
Discussion Over Reporting: Rather than passive updates, these briefings fostered collaborative problem-solving, allowing everyone to learn from senior leaders' perspectives
4. Decentralize decision-making to empower execution
The task force operated in highly dynamic urban combat zones. McChrystal humbly acknowledged that neither he nor other senior commanders had superior knowledge than the teams on the ground. Waiting for top-down approval slowed execution without adding value.
He shifted from a command-driven model to a decentralized, front-line structure where teams were empowered to make their own decisions.
Surprisingly, eliminating the extra approval layer not only accelerated outcomes but improved them. Instead of a 70% solution tomorrow, teams executed a 90% solution today.
When teams made the final call rather than simply recommending actions, they became more invested in the results!
A new leadership approach: “Eyes on, hands off”
As you may have guessed already, the transformation required a big shift in mindset for all the individuals involved. On the one hand, the new structure took away leaders' power and status by democratizing information and pushing decisions to the edges of the organization. On the other hand, it freed leaders to focus on what mattered most: nurturing an environment where teams could thrive.
Instead of dictating order, they focused on:
Facilitating conversations to keep teams aligned
Reinforcing the shared purpose across the organization
Removing communication bottlenecks to accelerate execution
Likewise, teams had to shift mindsets from waiting for orders to owning their missions and making critical decisions themselves in real time.
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What about you? Has your organization undergone an interesting transformation? I would love to hear your experience!
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