Losing to a Weaker Foe
What began as a heavily conventional military campaign to unseat the regime of Saddam Hussein had become a bitter, unconventional struggle against frustrated Sunnis who increasingly coalesced around a charismatic Jordanian who had taken the name Abu Musab al Zarqawi . . . The Joint Special Operations Task Force, although lavishly resourced and exquisitely trained, found ourselves losing to an enemy that, by traditional calculus, we should have dominated. Over time we began to realize that more than our foe, we were actually struggling to cope with an environment that was fundamentally different from anything we'd planned or trained for. The speed and interdependence of events had produced new dynamics that threatened to overwhelm the time-honored processes and culture we'd built . . . (p. 2)
Since its inception, the Task Force has conducted a regular cycle of training exercises . . . to refine the force's ability to execute missions. Relentlessly, quarter after quarter, year after year, intricate solutions to seemingly impossible situations have been developed, planned, rehearsed, and practiced around the world . . . (p. 117)
We could not claim we were mismatched against a world-class team. Honestly assessed, Al Qaeda was not a collection of supermen forged into a devilishly ingeniously organization by brilliant masterminds. They were tough, flexible, and resilient, but more often than not they were poorly trained and under-resourced . . . If we were the best of the best, why were we unable to defeat an under-resourced insurgency? Why were we losing? (p. 4, 19)
These factors are not unique to Iraq, or to warfare. They are affecting almost all of us in our lives and organizations every day . . . (p. 19)
When I joined the Ranger Regiment as a young captain, the standard operating procedures (SOPs) I followed were almost laughably detailed. My rucksack had to be packed with exactly the same equipment as every other Ranger's, and that equipment had to be in exactly the same pocket of the ruck. A folded entrenching tool was clipped to the left side and further held with parachute cord tied with prescribed knots. Failure to follow the SOPs brought immediate correction, and sometimes the punishment of a Saturday twelve-mile foot march-carrying the now correctly configured equipment. Such overweening rigor may seem ridiculous . . . but most of these regulations developed for a reason. Under fire and often in the dark, Rangers must be able to locate water, gauze, and ammunition in seconds. A correctly packed bag can mean the difference between life and death. (p. 35)
Basic SEAL training has earned a reputation as one of the toughest trials in the military. Of the 160-some students in each entering class, around 90 will drop out before the course ends, most in the first few weeks . . . The formation of SEAL teams is less about preparing people to follow precise orders than it is about developing trust and the ability to adapt within a small group. The purpose is not to produce supersoldiers. It is to build superteams. The first step of this is constructing a strong lattice of trusting relationships . . . (p. 95, 97)
When we first established our Task Force headquarters at Balad, we hung maps on almost every wall . . . But maps in Balad could not depict a battlefield in which the enemy could be uploading a video to an audience of millions from any house in any neighborhood, or driving a bomb around in any car on any street. In place of maps, whiteboards began to appear in our headquarters. Soon they were everywhere. Standing around them, markers in hand, we thought out loud, diagramming what we knew, what we suspected, and what we did not know. (p. 24, 25)
Every time we thought we had landed a debilitating blow to the organization as a whole, removing a ranking leader whose loss should have derailed them, they bounced back . . . from our vantage point, Al Qaeda should have devolved into an internal anarchy. But it didn't. It continued to function as persistently and implacably as ever, demonstrating a coherence of purpose and strategy. (p. 26)
To beat Al Qaeda, we would have to change into a type of force that the United States had never fielded. There was no manual for this transformation, and we had to conduct it in the middle of a war . . . Just as Al Qaeda had watched and learned from us at the start of the war, we would have to swallow our pride and learn from them. The messy diagrams on our whiteboards were not glitches-they were glimpses into the future organization of adaptable teams. (p. 84)
Our entire network-our teams across Iraq, intelligence agencies back in the United States and in the United Kingdom, headquarters of partner units across the region, and more than seventy liaison teams that the Task Force had positioned in headquarters, offices, and other critical locations-joined the effort. Across the network, teams coordinated the questions asked, shared the answers received, proffered suggestions, and exchanged insights. (p. 238)
The Task Force still had ranks and each member was still assigned a particular team and sub-sub-command, but we all understood that we were now part of a network . . . The structure that had, years earlier, taunted us from our whiteboards as we failed to prevent the murder of men, women, and children in attacks . . . had been repurposed . . . (p. 251)
A few years earlier, detainees would smugly dismiss our limited understanding of their organization. Now, they marveled at our intel, asking interrogators, "How are you doing this? How could you know that?" The answer was not some secret treasure trove of Al Qaeda data we stumbled across or a technological breakthrough in surveillance; it was the very edge that Al Qaeda had once held over us: a revolution in the mundane art of management. (p. 242)
(SOURCE: Excerpts from General Stanley McChrystal's (2015) Team of Teams. NY: Penguin.)
-What stages of team development do you see unfold under the leadership of General McChrystal?
What are the attributes you detect of each stage?

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