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

What if you could combine the agility, adaptability and cohesion of a small team with the power and resources of a giant organization. When General Stanley McChrystal took command of the Joint Special Operations Task Force in Iraq in 2003, he quickly realised that conventional military tactics were failing. The allied forces had a huge advantage in numbers, equipment and training - but none of the enemy's speed and flexibility. McChrystal and his colleagues discarded a century of conventional wisdom to create a `team of teams' that combined extremely transparent communication with decentralized decision-making authority. Faster, flatter and more flexible, t he task force beat back al-Qaeda. In this powerful book, McChrystal and his colleagues show how the challenges they faced in Iraq can be relevant to any leader. Through compelling examples, the authors demonstrate that the `team of teams' strategy has worked everywhere, from hospital emergency rooms to NASA, and has the potential to transform organizations large and small...

retired in July 2010 as a four-star general in the US Army. His last assignment was as the commander of the International Security Assistance Force and as the commander of the US forces in Afghanistan.