There is no map for leading in the 21st century in the middle of a global pandemic. Every leader has felt their inadequacy over the past month. How do we lead through an environment with so few answers at our disposal?

General Stanley McChrystal’s Team of Teams might be the best book I’ve read for providing us a road map for what leadership in this fluid environment ought to look like.

General Stanley McChrystal is humble, smart, and well-read. That’s quite a combination for a general. In Team of Teams, McChrystal shares his journey in leading the US Military from a top-down organization to a team of teams, an empowered community of leaders.

McChrystal argues that not only is this the best style of leadership, it is necessary in today’s landscape. McChrystal led the US Joint Special Operations Taskforce in the early 2000s in Iraq. That force was confronted by an opponent in Al Qaeda, whose strength was their nimbleness.

McChrystal argues that much of our organizational management has been passed down to us from the Industrial Revolution, where managers maximized an employee’s every movement on the assembly line. McChrystal refers to these as complicated systems: systems that may involve a lot of components, but those components are fundamentally predictable. Today’s reality is fundamentally different, McChrystal says. We live in complex systems. Complex systems are fundamentally unpredictable. Do you remember Dr. Malcolm explaining the butterfly effect in Jurassic Park? Weather systems are complex: even the tiniest variation in the environment can lead to completely different outcomes.

The reason for this new environment is varied: from globalization to the technological revolution, we live in a world where the complexity of change and the inter-connectedness of human beings across the globe demand new management approaches. We are no longer leading teams on assembly lines making widgets. This has been hammered home during this COVID-19 pandemic.

McChrystal urges us to prioritize effectiveness over efficiency. “Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right thing,” McChrystal clarifies. If we shoot for efficiency, it will backfire, and we will have automatons on our team, not independent thinkers. He says, “the rules and limitations that once prevented accidents now prevented creativity.”

The keys to this new style of leadership are adaptability and resilience. Those on the ground must be able to make decisions. There must be good communication across teams.

McChrystal refers to this broadly as a shared consciousness. Shared consciousness means that team members are invited into big picture thinking and develop strong lateral connectivity. We are not merely focused on our smaller team’s success, but on the success of other teams as well. This team of teams approach builds on itself.

Communication and trust go hand in hand. Healthy communication won’t happen without trust. A good leader’s role is to clarify purpose, build trust, and facilitate good communication. McChrystal reminds us that, “Purpose affirms trust, trust affirms purpose, and together they forge individuals into a working team.”

The final piece of developing a team of teams is through empowered execution. A true leader shares power. McChrystal suggests that we should shift our mindset of a great leader as a chess master to a great leader as a gardener. He explains that, “The temptation to lead as a chess master, controlling each move of the organization, must give way to an approach as a gardener, enabling rather than directing. A gardening approach to leadership is anything but passive. The leader acts as an “Eyes-On, Hands-Off” enabler who creates and maintains an ecosystem in which the organization operates.” When we lead as gardeners, we remove weeds, we ensure that the soil is optimal for growth, and we prune where appropriate.

McChrystal’s Team of Teams is insightful at every turn and a must-read for any leader. At our best, our team has thrived as a team of teams in the past month or so as we’ve navigated this new terrain. I’ve been blown away by the collective creativity of our team as they’ve solved new problems with fresh approaches. I encourage you to read the book and have your own leadership sharpened by such a wise guide.

Photo by JC Gellidon on Unsplash

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