Beginning the Journey
The first time I walked into McChrystal Group’s headquarters, I was 23 years old with a single year of prior experience at a traditional consultancy. McChrystal Group had no case studies yet. No books had been written. Just a sparse website and a handful of people who fought together in some of the most brutal, complex environments in modern warfare—who were now experimenting with how to turn those lessons into a different kind of business.
The office layout said it all, blending the functionality of a military command center with the aesthetic of an Apple Store. Every wall and table was converted into a dry-erase writing surface. Most rooms were equipped with pull-up bars and kettle bells. Performance dashboards were always on, displaying the company’s strategy and client metrics. While devoid of luxury, it remains the best office I have ever seen. It forced transparency and resiliency through every aspect of its design. I couldn’t explain to my mother what we actually did, but I was all in.
It became clear early on that this firm wasn’t built just to talk about leadership or to trade war stories. There was a deeper ambition: to ensure the hard-won lessons learned from modern combat didn’t stay confined to the battlefield.
Research from Northwestern University found that in 1980, 59% of CEOs of large, publicly held U.S. companies had served in the military. By 2006, that number had dropped to just 6.2%.
As a result, the powerful lessons of information-age leadership, built in unforgiving circumstances, became increasingly compartmentalized. Meanwhile, senior executives in the corporate world faced many of the same disruptors the military had already encountered: speed, interdependence, and relentless technological change. Yet, absent the brutal pressure of combat, most organizations were too slow to adapt, drifting without a compass in an unfamiliar environment.
From the firm’s beginning, what we now call “Team of Teams” was never positioned as “the answer.” It wasn’t a silver bullet or a one-size-fits-all solution. It wasn’t designed to replace great talent, thoughtful strategy, or disciplined execution.
It was designed to enable them when the environment was clouding their ability to operate.
Navigating Complexity
For the past 15 years, McChrystal Group has built a leadership operating system to unlock the latent potential trapped inside companies drowning in bureaucratic complexity. It was a call to action for building agile, connected, and resilient teams in an unpredictable world. Team of Teams offered a navigational tool—anchored in lived experience, not theory—to guide leaders through chaos.
For McChrystal Group’s founders, bringing these lessons forward wasn’t simply a business plan; it was a duty. What we probably underestimated was that the chaos and change of the early 21st Century would not even compare to today’s.
When Team of Teams was published in 2015, “complexity” still felt like consultant-speak. A decade later, it’s the baseline condition of modern work. Generative AI went from white paper to workforce infrastructure in under two years. Global supply chains pivot on the edge of geopolitics, climate disruption, cyber threats, and public health tremors.
The reason this framework has endured isn’t because it’s trendy. It’s because it’s true.
Long before we’re taught about org charts and email etiquette, we are wired to trust others, learn from our elders, and make sense of the world through shared stories. Team of Teams works because it is rooted in basic human principles.
Trust. Common purpose. Shared consciousness. Empowered execution.
McChrystal Group defined these not because they were new but because they are fundamental. Moreover, in a world of distributed power and generative intelligence, the things that connect us—character, narrative, and leadership—matter more than ever.
Technology will let one person do the work of five. But the critical challenge ahead isn’t efficiency—it’s cohesion. The organizations that thrive will be those that marshal cooperation at scale.
Discovering Three Enduring Truths
In the years that followed, I worked with clients across wildly different sectors: Scotts Miracle-Gro in consumer goods, Intuit in software, and Barrick Gold in mining.
Different industries. Same challenges.
Each was a category leader under pressure from the accelerating speed of the information age. Each had tried conventional change efforts and stalled. However, when their executives adopted a Team-of-Teams mindset, something shifted.
They didn’t just move faster; they moved together. They found a shared heading and could navigate together even in ambiguity.
After fifteen years of working with organizations of every kind, I’ve come to believe three enduring truths:
- Team of Teams endures because it’s rooted in a simple human truth: Across industries, geographies, and generations, teams perform better when they trust each other and are empowered to act. That was true at Joint Special Operations Command under General McChrystal’s leadership. It’s true in finance, healthcare, manufacturing, and government. And it will be true tomorrow. That doesn’t make it easy. But it makes it necessary.
- You don’t achieve great leadership. You never reach full trust, full empowerment, or fully shared consciousness. These are aspirational conditions, not finish lines. The goal isn’t mastery—it’s commitment. Commit to the journey long enough, and it starts to reshape how people think, lead, and connect. Value is found in the effort.
- Team of Teams becomes more valuable as the world becomes less predictable. The future is more obscure than it was even one year ago. The cycles of disruption are tighter. Individuals have more power but also must grapple with more uncertainty. In this rapidly changing information age, learning faster than the problem evolves is not just helpful—it’s existential. The winners won’t be the ones with the best five-year plans; they’ll be the ones with the strongest internal wiring for adaptation, cohesion, and purpose.
Charting the Unknown
Team of Teams is not a product. It is not a trend.
And the future? It remains unknowable. Anyone selling certainty is selling fiction.
What we offer is not an answer. We offer a way to think and decide when answers are scarce.
Team of Teams isn’t a map. It’s a compass.
And the leaders who pick up that compass to chart the unknown?
They’re the ones who will define the future.
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