Stanley McChrystal, Team of Teams: The Power of Small Groups in a Fragmented World, Chris Fussell Books on Tape 2015 (Audio CD) ISBN: =”1101887958”

My Review 5/5

Great narrative that looks how a complicated world became a complex one and how that impacts businesses. This is a continuation of the concept outlined in The Checklist Manifesto. Simple problems linked together can form complication problems.

Complex problems are a mesh of interdependent issues where linear inputs/outputs cannot be graphed. The ‘butterfly effect’ is in full force in these ecosystems. I’m liking the deep history of attribution of how command and control systems came into being by Frederick Winslow Taylor as the first “Scientific Management” practitioner.

This book has many anecdotal stories in which McChrystal details how having a shared consciousness benefited their strategic operations. Today’s managers should be “eyes on, hands off” and follow a pattern of “gardener, not chess master”. No longer can one person have the expertise to make every decision, the most important role of the leader is to foster a fertile environment for subordinates to thrive.

Date Read

2017/01/04

Date Added

2016/12/13

Significant Revisions