One Mission: How Leaders Build a Team of Teams

It was a good feeling for briefers to be referred to by name, and it sent a clear message to participants that individuals mattered in our organization.

Do you believe hesitants and deviants exist in your organization? Which leaders, or groups of leaders, most embody these behavioral principles? Do you currently have the ability to identify and leverage positive deviants within your organization? How might the use of an O&I forum, and interconnecting technology, help ease this process?

What helped tamp down this risk—that of insubordination and continued whisper guidance informed by the unit-level narrative—was the fact that McChrystal himself would become personally responsible for approving and considering new nominations for liaison roles. This was not only helpful in ensuring that the individuals selected held the right perso

the intentional creation of personal relationships among members of the bureaucratically unrelated but functionally interdependent teams allowed us to break down the walls of silos.

We talked about results not only for the operation’s sake but to tell the story of how a given action had enhanced or harmed relationships across the organization, or deepened credibility with key stakeholders. We were asked hard questions by our leadership not so they could demonstrate power but so they could give us room to be honest and vulnerab

a very mortal human who was willing to demonstrate behavioral standards and facilitate the interaction of teams rather than pretending to know all answers to their many problem sets.

What strains are being placed on your information pumps? How often do you personally feel like a bottleneck to cross-functional dialogue and collaboration in your organization? Where are you seeing complexity enter your environment? How are your teams reacting, and how are the expectations your organization holds for its leadership changing? Do you

At what would seem like the peak of their careers, these individuals would be removed from the front lines of the Task Force’s fight and embedded in a seemingly distant tribe. Once there, it would be their job to build and maintain difficult, trust-based relationships—the tracks on which information sharing among peer organizations would be enabled

Our leaders did not direct us but rather invited us to be part of this cultural and operational excursion.