One Mission ─ How Leaders Build a Team of Teams

From the co-author of New York Times bestseller Team of Teams, a practical guide for leaders looking to make their organizations flatter and more interconnected.

When retired four-star General Stanley McChrystal and former Navy SEAL Chris Fussell co-wrote Team of Teams, they drew on their experience transforming the U.S. military’s Special Forces into a flexible and nimble force that could defeat Al-Qaeda’s decentralized network in Iraq. They proved that the agility, adaptability, and cohesion of small teams could be scaled up to large organizations, while breaking down the silos that frequently cause problems.

Since Team of Teams became a bestseller in 2015, business leaders have repeatedly asked Fussell the same questions: How can I transform my own organization into a team of teams? Is that kind of dramatic change even possible, outside of the urgency of a combat zone? If so, what are the practical steps to get there?

Many Teams, One Mission answers those questions and many more. Drawing on his and consulting work with the McChrystal Group, Fussell shows how civilian organizations have transformed their way of doing business – becoming flatter, quicker, and much more collaborative across departments and divisions. Along with sharing his own experiences from the battlefield, he explores examples from industry titans like Intuit and Under Armour, which have adopted a similar model in order to unite everyone around single compelling mission. The result is a “shared consciousness” that drives consistently better results with less friction and inter-group rivalry.

This book is for any leader who wishes he or she could get everyone to look beyond their narrow field of vision to understand -- and contribute to – the organization’s one true mission.

Chris Fussell is a Partner at the McChrystal Group Leadership Institute and coauthor of the Team of Teams, a New York Times bestseller and the first book in the Team of Teams series. He was commissioned as a Naval Officer in 1997 and spent the next 15 years on U.S. Navy SEAL Teams around the globe. He then served as Aide-de-Camp to Lieutenant General Stanley McChrystal during McChrystal’s final year commanding a Joint Special Operations Task Force fighting Al Qaeda around the globe.

Since leaving active duty in 2012, Fussell has also served as a Senior Fellow for National Security at New America, sits on the Board of Directors for the Navy SEAL Foundation, is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and teaches at Yale University’s Jackson Institute. He lives in Washington, D.C. with his family.

C.W. ("Charlie") Goodyear is a graduate of Yale University, where he studied economics, speechwriting, and Mandarin. He is from New Orleans, Louisiana.