From Command to Networked Control: Leadership Lessons from McChrystal's Team of Teams
This week looked at the factory floor and the grid line nobody can walk. Part III asks what command structure can run either at scale, through Stanley McChrystal, Tantum Collins, David Silverman and Chris Fussell’s Team of Teams(Portfolio/Penguin, 2015).
In 2004, the Joint Special Operations Task Force was one of the most capable military organizations in history, and losing. Not for lack of skill, but because it was an efficient hierarchy fighting a fast, decentralized network: a decision a frontline captain could see clearly still had to climb the chain and back down, a cycle of days against an enemy that moved in hours. An organization can be efficient and still too slow. McChrystal’s fix was two habits in a fixed order: shared consciousness (radical transparency, the same raw operating picture for everyone) first, then empowered execution (decision rights pushed to whoever is closest to the information). Reverse the order and you don’t decentralize, you just multiply where a bad decision can be made.
The transferable test: trace any recurring decision from the person with the information to the person with the authority to act. More than one or two hops is a hierarchy tax, measured in how long it takes to fix what the frontline already saw. Your action this week: count the hops on three recurring decisions. Full sequence at renegrywnow.com.
Reflection questions
For three recurring decisions, how many hops separate the information from the authority to act?
Have you pushed authority to the frontline without first giving them the full operating picture, distributing risk, not judgment?
Do you measure decision cycle time, or only decision quality?
Keywords: Team of Teams, McChrystal, Shared Consciousness, Empowered Execution, Decision Rights, Networked Organization, Decentralization, Cycle Time, Organizational Design, Leadership
Series: Energy Dominance · Week 40 · Part III
Previous: Part I: Brownfield vs Greenfield Robotics · Part II: Inspection Drones and the Maintenance Stack.
