There's Something In The Name - A Book Review of Stan McChrystal's Team of Teams
Well hello, fellow outlaws, rapscallions, and all-around hell raisers. I apologize for my absence, but I've been a tad busy with a new job (hooray!), a new house (exhausting), and a new city (sweeeet). Minor inconveniences that distract me from my primary purpose in life, entertaining you unwashed heathens. I'm back with a whole new feature that I haven't done before - a book review. Now, I'm not any sort of book critic and I'm certainly no military expert, so let's all agree to take my examination of General McChrystal's new book with a large grain of salt, m'kay?
I want to establish one thing right of the bat before I start the book review, because I realize there is cause for confusion. Stan McChrystal is NOT Stannis Baratheon. I don't know what is about having "Stan" in your first name, but somehow it empowers those with the name to become spectacular military leaders. Stan McChrystal is one hell of a leader and a warrior, but he should not be confused with Stannis Baratheon.
General Stan McChrystal, contemplating going H.A.M. on some poor Al Qaeda
Stannis Baratheon, having recently gone H.A.M. on some poor usurper
Both grizzled veterans of multiple wars? Check. Both proven combat leaders that stand head and shoulders above their peers? Check. Both willing to burn their close loved ones in the hopes it will grant them the blessing of R'hllor, the Red God and Lord of Light? Check. Well, I'm not 100% sure on that last one, we'll put that in the "maybe" column for now. All I'm saying is that we should count how many kids McChrystal has. Stan the Man may very well be the finest leader to emerge from America's war on terror, but he's no Stannis the Mannis.
McChrystal wishes he was this hard
Right, so I think we're all on the same page about who Stan McChrystal is NOT. As for who he IS, well, from 2003 to 2009, he commanded Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), which is where all of America's favorite action heroes reside. Think of all the best Chuck Norris, Mark Wahlberg, and Sylvester Stone movies, and you generally get the picture of the kind of warriors we're talking about. Under McChrystal's command, JSOC became the preeminent hunters of Al Qaeda in Iraq. McChrystal's new book, Team of Teams, documents his lessons learned during his tenure in command of JSOC and how the organization painfully adapted to fighting a new enemy, one that was significantly more agile and flexible than they were. The transfer-ability of his book's lessons to any company is significant.
If I could boil down all of McChrystal's teachings into one simple blurb, it would be this:
Adaptability is the new currency of the realm.
In Iraq, JSOC was floundering badly because it simply couldn't react fast enough to Al Qaeda's operations. AQ didn't have a decision making process - it was a nebulous system of teams that were vaguely guided, but had almost no operational or tactical level coordination. This allowed them to constant adapt and adjust to their environment, where as JSOC was confined by many rules and protocols, similar to those of many major corporations. JSOC was a big, bad ass great white shark, but it was trying to fight a school of jelly fish. McChrystal realized in order to fight an enemy that took no solid form, held no territory, or didn't follow any playbook, he had to recreate his entire organization. In his own words, he realized "efficiency remains important, but the ability to adapt to complexity has become imperative." Take a typical SEAL platoon for example. SEALs are great at 3 things:
Working out
Shooting bad guys in the face
Writing books and making movies starring themselves that shows them working out, then shooting bad guys in the face.
IN THE FACE!
Where was I going with this? I don't know, something something, SEALs suck, um....... Oh, right! So now it wasn't enough for the SEALs to be just good at shooting everyone in the face. They, along with the many other units that comprised JSOC, had to rapidly expand their ability to process intelligence, and just as importantly, SHARE that knowledge with everyone else in the fight.
Until JSOC started to lose in Iraq, they didn't fully realize that their pursuit of efficiency was forcing them to train and execute towards a specific set of known and stable variables. Al Qaeda didn't give a damn if JSOC had the most perfectly trained and rehearsed vehicle interdiction drill, because it took JSOC days to conduct just one mission where as they could have a dozen vehicle-borne suicide bombers blow themselves up in a day. The great white shark was getting its ass kicked by the jelly fish.
So they righted the ship. McChrystal's turn-around of JSOC is now something of a legend within the armed forces. He boosted transparency by openly broadcasting his decision process, sharing as much information with partner agencies as possible, all while simultaneously empowering units to conduct missions as they saw necessary. These types of actions take serious guts. In this day and age, it is so incredibly easy for a leader to dictate down to the lowest level. We have the ability to reach out and watch our subordinates' every move, allowing leaders to Monday morning quarterback others. This is called the Perry Principle - that which you can see, you attempt to control. It is has been the cause of many a CEO's fall from grace. It takes a ton of trust in others to know they will do as good a job (if not even better) at the task they have without your close supervision. McChrystal focused the majority of his efforts not on supervising the efforts of his units as they conducted missions. Instead, he worked on fusing a generalized awareness of the environment with the specialized expertise each of his units brought to the fight. This "shared consciousness" was the hallmark of his time in command, and he focused more on building and maintaining that culture than anything else. He relates his role as the commander of JSOC to one of a gardener - occasionally pruning a bush or picking out a weed, but otherwise allowing the garden to flourish in its own right.
The world changes. Quickly. Organizations that don't change as quickly as the world does end up in the trashbin. Simple enough concept, and there are more than a few consulting firms that say the same thing to their clients. Which is probably why McChrystal now runs a consultant company... coincidences aside, Stan is onto something. The previous century's companies were dominated by those who maximize their efficiency. The companies that will dominate this century will be those who can shift their efficiency as rapidly as needed to address new threats and/or opportunities. Companies like Toyota are greatly admired for the processes and methodologies they built that allowed them to produce incredibly high quality machines with near-miraculous levels of error omission. Astounding, truly, they are the picture-perfect example of 20th century corporation. But it's no longer enough.
The rise of the Internet Age has had so many profound changes of society that many of those changes remain largely misunderstood or ignored. But one thing men like McChrystal now understand is that it's no longer enough to run an organization that's incredible at doing one thing. The world has become increasingly flat, allowing just about anyone with a little bit of technology and a little bit of cash to build something that challenges the status quo. A hotel chain is able to spot a rival hotel chain's expansion, but you think any of them saw AirBnB coming? Those guys didn't have to build any infrastructure. All it takes is a couple cocky 20-somethings with a strong disregard for "the way things have always been run", a PowerPoint slide deck of their idea, and one venture capital firm that says "screw it, here's $10 million, let's see what you can do" and you've suddenly got your another competitor in your market space. We see this same thing playing out all over the place. I honestly can't think of a single industry that isn't currently challenged in a way that was unimaginable just a decade ago.
This image is totally unrelated to this blog post. Still cool, though.
Allow me to further illustrate with an example of my friend. I know a guy, Ralphio (not his real name, but I'm totally going to call him that from now on, and he'll all be like "why the hell do you keep calling me Ralphio???") who, despite having a high paying job, drives for Uber on the side. Why? Because it's fun and it gives him even more money. Taxi cabs used to be a sure fire investment - highly regulated, strict controls, tough unions, and protective city governments all helped build an environment that made it a wise decision for someone to spend a ton of money on a taxi license. Now, thanks to a couple guys down in San Francisco, every taxi company in a major city is scared out of its mind. I mean, think about it - what taxi company in its right mind ever dreamed that they would suddenly face competition in the from of a rich guy who drives on his free time for fun and to make extra cash? That's what everyone is going up against these days - no industry is safe.
And that, my friends, is why I recommend Stan McChrystal's Team of Teams book - because you're not safe, and if you think you are, you may already be too late. Somebody out there is coming for you (in the economic sense, not literally. Please don't sit at your front door with a shotgun). They aren't burdened by years of corporate culture that thinks "this is the way things are done" and blinds itself to innovation. It may be out of Silicon Valley, but it's just as likely out of Manila or New Delhi. The point is, you probably won't even see it coming because it's such a tiny blip on the radar. So prepare yourself by building the type of culture that rapidly adapts to new threats. Go read how JSOC did it, then see if you can apply it to your own workplace.
Mic drop.