Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World

General Stanley McChrystal · Tantum Collins · David Silverman · Chris Fussell

May 2015 · Sold by Penguin

About this ebook

From the New York Times bestselling author of My Share of the Task and Leaders, a manual for leaders looking to make their teams more adaptable, agile, and unified in the midst of change.

When General Stanley McChrystal took command of the Joint Special Operations Task Force in 2004, he quickly realized that conventional military tactics were failing. Al Qaeda in Iraq was a decentralized network that could move quickly, strike ruthlessly, then seemingly vanish into the local population. The allied forces had a huge advantage in numbers, equipment, and training—but none of that seemed to matter. To defeat Al Qaeda, they would have to combine the power of the world’s mightiest military with the agility of the world’s most fearsome terrorist network. They would have to become a "team of teams"—faster, flatter, and more flexible than ever.

In Team of Teams, McChrystal and his colleagues show how the challenges they faced in Iraq can be rel­evant to countless businesses, nonprofits, and or­ganizations today. In periods of unprecedented crisis, leaders need practical management practices that can scale to thousands of people—and fast. By giving small groups the freedom to experiment and share what they learn across the entire organiza­tion, teams can respond more quickly, communicate more freely, and make better and faster decisions. 


Drawing on compelling examples—from NASA to hospital emergency rooms—Team of Teams makes the case for merging the power of a large corporation with the agility of a small team to transform any organization.

Ratings and reviews

The historical contexts and other out-of-the-blue references are the glue that made this book work for me. The things he was doing are definately not new, but it was cool to have a walk-through of a transformation (in the government no less!). I found most of the historical parts of the book to be a personal game changer - not unlike a James Burke type of "Connections". I think that toward the end it tapered off, but could have been an opportunity to showcase a lot more modern success stories than his own and that of the Apollo program. Folks like myself who have been in the IT development space for decades, have watched in horror as launch after launch of "agile: XP, Scrum, and other methodologies" explode shortly after take off. The failures typically have little to do with technical teams; rather it is generally an issue of managers push back on empowerment. I would have added a star if I could have learned more about some other modern "empowerment" success stories. If you want a rulebook for how to do what he did with his organization in Iraq, read the short series "XP Extreme Programming". XP is heresy in most IT shops today, but I still believe in its power of hyper-communication and continuous improvement.

Looked more like a propaganda than a leadership book

Great read that demonstrates the benefits and rewards of being an adaptive leader.

About the author

Stanley McChrystal retired from the U.S. Army as a four-star general after more than thirty-four years of service. His last assignment was as the commander of all American and coalition forces in Afghanistan. His memoir, My Share of the Task, was a New York Times bestseller. He is a senior fellow at Yale University’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs and the cofounder of CrossLead, a leadership consulting firm. Tantum Collins is currently studying international relations at Cambridge University as a Marshall Scholar. David Silverman and Chris Fussell are senior execu­tives at CrossLead and former U.S. Navy SEAL officers.