The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 215: Chris Fussell -- How To Build A Team of Teams (One Mission)

Episode Date: July 23, 2017

Episode 215: Chris Fussell -- How To Build A Team of Teams (One Mission) Chris Fussell is a Partner at the McChrystal Group Leadership Institute. He is the author of One Mission: How Leaders Build a Team of Teams, and a co-author of the New York Times bestseller Team of Teams, the first book in the 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. Episode 215: Chris Fussell -- How To Build A Team of Teams (One Mission) Subscribe on iTunes  or Stitcher Radio The Learning Leader Show "Remember, your position has little formal authority but massive reach. For many of the organizations we interact with, their entire opinion of our organization will be shaped off the tone of your emails, the courtesy you give their staff, and the respect you show for their Mission." -- General Stanley McChrystal speaking to Chris Fussell immediately following him becoming his Aide-De-Camp Show Notes: Sustained Excellence: A constant intellectual curiosity The interview process to become General McChrystal's Aide-De-Camp A unique window to get that exposure McChrystal trusted that if Chris wasn't qualified, then he wouldn't have been nominated Career goals --> Family situation (could it handle Chris working 24/7 for a year? --> What would Chris enjoy about it? What sealed Chris earning the job?  Chris being incredibly curious about wanting to fully understand how the organization runs at a high level.  General McChrystal loved that about Chris "It was one of the hardest years of my career" It was intense but the exposure was phenomenal "If we've hit a point for 24 hours where we aren't questioning something, or there is no friction, then something is wrong" How to handle issues at UBER? "The issue is putting too much on to 1 person. It's not about 1 heroic leader. There needs to be a cultural shift.  They need to create a leadership culture." Operating Rhythm -- John Heisman 1899: The hurry up offense.  Just because you have a 40 second play clock, doesn't mean you have to use all of it. Chris and team were on a 24 hour operating rhythm.  They re-synchronized every 24 hours.  Had to have a flexible approach to handle the enemy. A sense of shaped consciousness Chris Zook An aversion to bureaucracy Front line obsession Transparency of communication model Senior leaders remain in close contact with issues on the ground without having to put out all of the fires Hybrid model layered into it --> Interconnected model McChrystal's advice to Chris when he first got the job: "Remember, your position has little formal authority but massive reach. For many of the organizations we interact with, their entire opinion of our organization will be shaped off the tone of your emails, the courtesy you give their staff, and the respect you show for their Mission." Chris's career advice: Don't think about money/industry -- Think what matters most to you? Lifestyle -- Coaching little league or being a high level CEO?  Where do you want to be in 5 years? Where do you want to live? Do you want to raise a family? Important to map all of that out and build a profession around those goals. Chris also teaches at Yale and does this exercise Write a letter to yourself -- What type of leader do you want to be in 5 years? Map out your goals "It's a cultural shift. A development of a leadership culture is needed." -- Chris Fussell discussing the changes he would make at UBER Social Media: Follow Chris on Twitter: @FussellChris Read: One Mission: How Leaders Build A Team Of Teams Connect with me on LinkedIn Join our Facebook Group: The Learning Leader Community To Follow Me on Twitter: @RyanHawk12 More Learning: Episode 078: Kat Cole – From Hooters Waitress To President of Cinnabon Episode 071: NateBoyer - Green Beret, Texas Football, The NFL Episode 179: How To Sustain Excellence - The Best Answers From 178 Questions Episode 107: Simon Sinek – Leadership: It Starts With Why Episode edited by the great J Scott Donnell The Learning Leader Show is supported by Callaway Golf. We have partnered to give away The #1 selling Driver in 2017.  The Callaway GBB Epic Driver.  This club is valued at $499 and we are giving one away to a loyal listener of the show.  To enter the drawing: Tweet (or post on Instagram) a favorite leadership quote from an episode of The Learning Leader Show and tag/@ me on Twitter or Instagram.

If we hit a point where for 24 hours, everything just seemed okay, then there was this immediate unrest inside the organization where people realized if we haven't changed something, if we're not pushing ourselves or tweaking something or creating some sort of internal questioning and friction through the questions we ask, et cetera, then everybody became uncomfortable. because there was this collective realization that if we're not, if we're not in that mood of constantly shifting, we're missing something because the problem isn't stopping. No matter what, we know it's in constant motion. This episode is brought to you by my friends at Callaway Golf. Calloway's business and marketing approach has turned heads over the last several years, helping the company make a dramatic turnaround from losing millions of dollars per year to being a leader in the industry. Products like the GBB Epic Driver, Steelhead XR irons and Calloway's Chrome Soft golf ball are aimed at avid golfers looking for premium performance.

And the coolest part about this partnership is we're doing a giveaway. Yes, we're giving away the number one selling driver of 2017, the GB epic driver. All you have to do is put your favorite leadership quote pulled from an episode of The Learning Leader show on Twitter or Instagram. So pull your favorite leadership quote that any of the greatest leadership minds over the last three years from the Learning Leader show has said, quote them on Twitter or Instagram, and tag my name at Ryan Hawk 12, at Ryan Hawk 1-2 on Twitter or Instagram. My team will gather all of the quotes, and you can enter as many times you like, the more times that you enter, the better chance you have of winning. and over the course of a few months, we will gather them all, and then we will draw a random winner, and my friends at Callaway will send you the GB Epic Driver. Thank you so much. I look forward to seeing all of your great responses on Twitter and Instagram at Ryan Hawk 12. And thank you to my friends at Callaway Gull.

Hey, and welcome to the Learning Leader Show. I am Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. I love this conversation with my featured leader, Chris Fustle. It was round two For us, I had him on episode number 45, about two years ago. It's amazing to see the growth in him and the show since then. He is a partner at the McChrystal Group Leadership Institute. Also, the author of a great new book titled One Mission, How Leaders Build a Team of Teams. And he was a co-author of the New York Times bestseller Team of Teams, the first book in the series. He was commissioned as a naval officer in 1997, 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. Few of the topics we got into how to use the same methods they used to fight al-Qaeda in the business world. Then what the interview process was like with General McChrystal to become his aide-de-camp? What was asked? What was the feeling Chris had going into it? And how did he feel once he completed the interview process and was offered the role? And then we close the conversation with career advice and an exercise we should all do to better plan for our future.

It was so good. Ladies and gentlemen, it's Chris Fustle. All right, Chris, welcome back for round two on the Learning Leader Show. Thank you so much for being here, man. Hey, thanks, Ryan. Appreciate you having me back on. Immediately when I saw that you were writing a book, a follow-up to a team of teams called One Mission, I knew I said, I got to get Chris back on. because last time we spoke, you know it's been a few years, which it seems like it's flown by.

I love the conversation we have and just learning about how you've taken some of what you learned from the battlefield and transitioned it to the business world. So I'm curious, what was the impetus for this next follow-up book to Team of Teams called One Mission? Yeah, it really sort of came to us. We really enjoyed writing Team of Teams. the idea there was to capture sort of this, you know, big theory of the case about what had changed in the world in general that led to this much more complex battlefield that we faced post 9-11. And so team of teams laid that out. And then a lot of folks in the market came to us and said, yeah, that makes total sense. That's very similar to what's happening in our space, whatever industry that might be.

But we'd really love to know, you know, one level down, like what are the actual processes that we should be considering to implement this sort of shape. that you described in team of teams. So that's where the idea of one mission came from. And I sat down with General Crystal and we talked it through and he said, hey, why don't you tell this story from your perspective as a part of the staff and the more junior elements that saw this change evolve? And so that's why it became a story told from my perspective throughout my career, which was about 15 years on active duty.

And I was able to see this sort of. process evolve at multiple layers. And then I spent, obviously, we talked about this previously, but I spent a year as General McChrystal's aide-de-camp, so sort of like a staff position, his last year running all of the global task force that was fighting Al-Qaeda and other networks. And so really one mission picks up from that perspective. So, hey, as a person, as relatively junior person sitting watching these senior leaders run this global enterprise, here's what I saw happen, change, etc. And here are the major processes that I think they were focused on.

And so it sort of gives as much of a roadmap for leaders in different organizations to map their own change process against. How do you go about, we briefly talked about this last time, but I think for the people who might maybe listen, the audience has grown significantly since two years ago, for the people who didn't hear that one, what was the process like to be selected as General McChrystal's aid to camp? slash chief of staff, I think is basically what that position is, right? It's similar to a lot of what you would see in corporate organizations, how they leverage a chief of staff. Like a C-O-O kind of? Yeah, I mean, there's lots of variation inside of those titles, obviously.

Some aid to camps in the military are very, it depends on the leader, how they want to leverage them. And Crystal allowed us to sort of work up to our full capacity. So I was invited to a lot of, had audience in a lot of situations that other leaders might have chosen not to expose someone at my level to. So it was very rewarding. And you see similar sort of leveraging of chiefs of staff and industry. That's been a pretty close example in my mind. The selection process was sort of, it was interesting and funny for me because we had, you know, multiple different military branches involved in the task force that McChrystal oversaw. And he tried to rotate through different communities. onto his staff. And so I was in the SEAL teams for my entire active duty career and he had not had a SEAL fill that position.

He'd had an Army Ranger, an Air Force, one or two Air Force guys. And so entering his last year, he reached out to my senior leadership and said, hey, I want to get a seal into this position from my last year. And so a few of us got nominated by various senior leaders

inside of our various components of the SEAL teams, went up to did an interview with McChrystal, who I'd met a few times, but at a very junior level, obviously, I was just sort of reporting up to him on wherever I happened to be stationed on the battlefield. And then he was home for 24 hours from Iraq. I popped up to D.C. He was in a meeting there at the National Defense University, had a 30-minute interview with him

or so, and then about a week later, he pinged my commander. and said, hey, we'd like Fustle to come on and serve in this position. And, you know, it's one of those opportunities where you think you can't really plan for it, but once it arises, it's just a really unique window to get exposure to that level of seniority and see how the big machine is actually functioning. So it was one of the hardest years of my career. I mean, you're not physically in danger because you're on a staff. You're Ford in Iraq, but you're basically in a headquarters all the time.

But the demands, the way that McChrystal ran that machine was just nonstop, seven days a week for years on end. I mean, he's just endless energy and focus. And so it was a high pressure position because if you let any balls drop, the ripple effects were massive, because you were literally touching all parts of this global organization. So that part was intense, but the exposure was phenomenal. because you get to sit through these meetings with very senior leaders and see how they think and how they interact with each other. So for that part, it was by far the most rewarding 12 months of my active duty career.

A lot of people listening talk to me about the interview process for whatever job they're going for, a promotion, a big leadership role. What does a 30-minute interview with General Stanley McChrystal sound and feel like? Yeah, you know, it was It was pretty interesting, actually, because we'd met each other several times, and he was, he's a soldier's leader, so he knew people in the task course,

so it wasn't like, tell me again who you are. I mean, he knows who works for him. But I didn't really know what to expect. You know, I thought it might be, well, how would you approach this job and tell me about your organizational skills? But it wasn't that at all. It was just a, tell me about where you are in your career.

So I kind of mapped out where things are going. And I realized in hindsight, this was all him thinking through, is this a right fit for me in my career progression? And I think his assumption going in was any candidate that's sitting down here has been vetted by their own leadership. So I'm going to assume you've got the capability to do this. So let's not waste time there. So he wanted to know about my career, my goals, next steps, et cetera. and then he was mapping that against what I would get out of this tour. Then we had a conversation about my family situation.

At that point, I was married. We had no kids. But he wanted to know how my wife was doing with all of the deployments we'd all been on because he knew this would be a really intense year. I'd just basically be gone for the whole year. And he wanted to make sure that that, again, in hindsight, that he was being fair and honest about what it would mean to Holly and I, which I obviously deeply appreciated.

And then we got into a bit of a conversation about what I would enjoy about the position potentially. And that I think in retrospect, this is what sealed the deal because I had been very interested in how the organization was actually running. And I didn't have a way to articulate it very effectively then. But I think I said something like it seems like from the levels I've worked at that something is very different about how this organization is being run. So all things that I would get out of it, that's what interests me the most, is trying to see behind the curtain and understand how you're pulling all these different levers. And he just sort of looked at me for a second. And I wasn't sure if I'd even made sense.

And we kind of wrapped things up. But he told me later, he said, yeah, I mean, the fact that you had an interest in how the changes were actually working is why, ultimately I wanted to bring you on board just to give you the opportunity to see it firsthand. And then, you know, much to my delight that was happening in a much deeper way than I could have ever suspected from the outside. But it was not, I mean, it was not a traditional, like, in the hot seat, you know, answer this hard question. Why do you want to do this sort of thing? It was very much more. I'm going to assume you're capable of this.

Let's get to know each other a little bit inside if it's a right. I read that he when he was speaking about you, he mentioned a quality in you that I found after, doing 215 plus of these episodes, these conversations with the greatest leaders in the world, Chris, that I can even quote him, it said, your constant questioning revealed a unique interest in the design and experimentation taking place at the task force's strategic level. For example, you wanted to know how you manage the decentralized decision making that General McChrystal and his peers had become accustomed to, how you maintained awareness, did not impede, but did not impede the resourcing decisions taking place at the small unit level and on and on and on. And so what I,

what I grab from that when I see him writing and talking about you is the fact that you approach the conversation with a curious mind. And that is such a common theme, Chris, amongst the best of the best is that they don't feel like they've got it all figured out, even if they have a pretty good handle on most things. But they're constantly striving to learn, to understand, the how behind it. And I think that's what it feels like as to why this next book was written, was the follow-up question from Team of Teams was how exactly do you create an adaptable organization? Do I have that right? Is that accurate as far as what, both your mindset from a curiosity perspective and then the follow-up to Team of Teams is how do you create an adaptable

organization? Yeah. No, I mean, I understand. Stan's very kind. And it's, is to scriptures, but that was by no means a unique attribute in that world that I came from. I mean, it was filled with people with that sort of constant intellectual curiosity about how things could be improved. I had the opportunity to fill some positions that gave me access to understand it at a deeper level, which I was very thankful for. But scaling it up to the enterprise level is exactly the point of one mission. And, you know, it was really interesting in my act of duty time, that global organization, thousands of people around the world,

it really did have its own personality. And this is the work we try to do with organizations now with McChrystal Group is I truly believe an organization can develop its own cultural personality of intellectual curiosity and constant adaptive pursuit. And that was what I think made our the military units that we were part of so effective is that if you, I'll describe it to people like this and it sometimes might sound a little odd, but if we hit a point where for 24 hours,

everything just seemed okay, then there was this immediate unrest inside the organization where people realized if we haven't changed something, if we're not pushing ourselves or tweaking something or creating some sort of internal question, and friction through the questions we ask, et cetera, then everybody became uncomfortable because there was this collective realization that if we're not in that mood of constantly shifting, we're missing something because the problem isn't stopping. No matter what, we know it's in constant motion. And for us, that was this, you know, the Al-Qaeda networks and other affiliates. But I think that's the new norm right now. And so whatever industry people are in,

the problem outside, whether you see it or not, it's changing. It's changing. It's changing right now. There's somebody on social media that's that's blasting your product. There's a startup that's about to eat a piece of your market. There's something going on there. And if you're not anxious about seeing it and having a conversation about how you can change to interact with it or defeat it, then it's moving past you. So that level of just collective intellectual curiosity about what's shifting in the market is part of what the process is laid out in one mission or designed to allow an organization to do to create that conversation within the enterprise. One of the other cool aspects of one mission is the fact that there's many case studies.

I can't even imagine the process to write this book. We could probably talk for an hour about just how you're able to piece it together. It had to just take an immense amount of time. But there's case studies, and I'm going to get to some of them. But what you just said peaked a separate question that I hadn't planned. So I've been talking recently, Chris, with a lot of VC's venture capitalist. and leaders in that world, I have an angel investor, some others that I've spoken with. And one of the companies that has come up that's going through some turmoil, some changes,

is Uber because of their leader, their CEO basically got fired. And I'm curious, and maybe, I don't know if you actually have been retained by them, you probably can't talk about it. But just I'm hoping you haven't just for the sake of this question. When you see a situation like theirs, they're dealing with ever-changing markets. They tried to go to China. It didn't work. They had to sell their CEO is having massive problems to where he's getting forced to resign.

How does what you guys do at the McChrystal Group, what one mission talks about? How would you handle a situation with an ever-changing market and a bunch of internal issues that start right at the top? Yeah, it's a really interesting case study. And I'm just an outside observer like you are. So happy to throw some thoughts out. I think the error that any organization or we as a collective makes in this sort of situation is putting too much onus on to one individual leader. And that's part of sort of the closing pages of one mission. I give my own sort of two cents on debunking sort of the heroic leader myth, where it's just it's up to this one person and he or she will show up and save this from our troubles.

That's really never been the case, but when the world moved slower, it was easy to remember history through that optic. It was easy to remember the history of World War II through Churchill, FDR, Stalin, etc. These senior people that made it all happen. Well, that's not true. It was a massive collection of millions of people around the world that were part of a story that they happened to be at the center of. But things moved slower, so you could sort of tell the story through that lens. Now things move so quickly that we really do. risk if we expect, you know, Travis to come along and just immediately save Uber because we

like this, especially, I think, in the tech startup sort of space, you know, the overnight unicorn billionaire, mass evaluation sort of organization, well, we're setting unrealistic expectations for these one single leaders that sit on top of these things. So let's not make that worse by hoping that, well, let's find the next CEO that will come in and replace Travis at Uber and he or she will save it all. This is a cultural shift that has to take place. They created an amazing platform, grew exponentially overnight. We all know the story there. So understandably, there's been a constraint on how much focus they could give to their leadership training and the cultural evolution that goes along with that. So that's where I would

say dive immediately into that and start focusing on development of a leadership culture. inside the organization that can fix this throughout the enterprise. This is not a single person is not going to come in and fix this situation. It's like a culture is going to collectively say, okay, here's how we're going to write the ship. Here's how we're going to lead ourselves. Here's what leadership looks like inside our organization at every level. That's going to take time and focus. But if they set it as a benchmark and say, we take this very seriously and we're going to start a a deliberate program across the entire organization, then they'll get there much quicker than if they just wait for the next senior leader to come up.

And hopefully they have the magic fix, which just doesn't exist. Do you guys do a lot of that at the Mercrystal group where you'll go in and try to create or form the foundation of developing a leadership culture? We do. Yeah. So the work we've done from over the last five or six years initially started on advisory services. So going in with a management team and dealing with, you know, process change and

decentralized decision making, et cetera. And we still do that in great depth. But about a year ago, we formally established the McChrystal Group Leadership Institute, which gives us the ability to go in and do exactly what you said. Maybe there's not a process change that needs to take place right now. Maybe the communication structures are fine. But let's focus directly on leader development. And that can be everything from, you know, one individual team to a broad enterprise level engagement, like the one we're just talking about. So, yeah, that's a critical component of any of this change that we're going to go through. And I'll tell people now, I describe that the change that McChrystal and his senior leadership team drove inside of the military as a culture shift

masked inside of process improvement. So we started with process. We need to communicate more. We need to communicate faster. We need to decentralized decision-making rights. That's all stuff you can put on a whiteboard and chart out. But that drove towards speed of communication, transparency of communication, inclusion of thousands of people into the conversation. That then led to unknowingly, I think even to our senior leaders led to a culture change

and how leaders interacted with each other at every level. I really was fascinated by operating rhythm. You use the story of John Heisman in the book and how an 1899 even loved some of the history you get to, especially being a football guy, this is interesting to me about the hurry up offense. This is more common nowadays, but reminded me of a similar offense I ran in high school because my team typically had smaller players, smaller offense of Lyman going against bigger players, so we would run a hurry up offense with hopes of them tiring out. And this is this was John Heisman's idea too when he was doing it in 1890. And you call it the operating rhythm, which is also that the balance between creating shared consciousness and opening windows of highly decentralized decision making. So I think in team of teams it was called empowered execution. And you refer to it now as the operating rhythm.

So how does, can you talk to me about when you go in and you work with companies or you were writing this book when you discuss the operating rhythm? How does this get implemented in a successful way so that it actually isn't just something that's a change management thing that happens at the beginning, but stays implemented into a process for a company or any type of leadership group? Yeah, sure. Yeah, I think the Heisman story is great. I mean, I wasn't a football player. I was a wrestler. So team sports have always been fascinating to me. I mean, wrestling, you're on a team, but it's a very individual sport.

And, you know, the curious part on the Heisman thing, maybe you know the history of this. I've always wondered why, so he did that in 1890. And he never went back to it, even though he had a great year with it. That was his last year at Arburn. And with a very small team, I think they lost one game that year. But the Heisman never returned to it. And then it was years later before anybody picked it up. And now it's more common, but it's still not, you know, it's not the norm at any level.

I always wondered why more people don't run it all the time. because what it, from my perspective, not being a football player, is he was the first one to introduce a really sort of, you know, it sounds cliche, but an out-of-box sort of approach where he said, what's the one thing that everyone frames the rhythm of the game inside of it, which is the play clock? And so, but that can be challenged, right? Everybody assumes that there's this amount of time between plays,

so let's use it all. And he said, well, what if we didn't use it all? There's no one saying I have to use every second. on the play clock, I could use five seconds of it if I want to. And what does that do to the rhythm of the game? So he started to look at the time horizon of the play on the field through a whole different lens, right? And so that was one of the problems that we encountered, which was we've got this al-Qaeda network that can shift, change, decentralize, create action in a way that is so much faster than a traditional organization because we have to go from me to my boss,

my boss's boss, et cetera, before you can get permission back down, which is a time constraint, right? And so that's where I try to bridge that in the book, is to say, and to your point about operating rhythm, every organization should take a step back and say, let's forget for a second, sort of the traditional tempo with which we've gathered information, made decisions at a senior level and gotten that back down to the field to do the next thing, whether that could be close a deal or start a new marketing campaign, whatever the case may be, we know what that timescale looks like. And that timescale tends to be looked at and optimized to defeat your known competition, which are, they're structured the same way, just like two big armies facing

each other have the same sort of bureaucratic structure top down. And so with organizational leaders that are thinking along these lines, take a step back from that, that rhythm, that operating rhythm between two like structured organizations, and think about those outside problems. Think about how fast the startups can flood a market. Think about how fast an online campaign can hurt your product. Think about how quickly those things happen and then consider the difference between that speed of change and how quickly your traditional model can move. at full tilt. And full tilt is not sustainable, as we all know. So in there, that's your new operating rhythm. You still have to consider the optimizing to defeat the like-structured organizations.

But part of your enterprise has to be able to move the speed of those fast-moving, constantly changing, often network-based problems as well, which is where we ended up. And this is why, I lay this out in one mission, why McChrystal and our senior leadership ended up. putting this global task force on a 24-hour operating rhythm because they realized the problems we're facing change every day. The al-Qaeda network is a different thing every morning when it wakes up because it's just a social network of human beings around the world. And so we have to re-synchronize ourselves every 24 hours as well. So that became our operating rhythm. They looked deliberately at the problem we were facing and said we have to be able to move that fast. And so

I think corporate leaders can do the same thing. And so what's the speed of these really fast moving problems? Do they change every week, every two weeks? Do they go up and down throughout the year? Then let's set part of our organization against that operating rhythm. And if we can do both those, if we can move as fast as our big traditional competition through optimization of our bureaucracy and have the ability to move as quickly as these decentralized networks,

works, then no one can compete with us, which is why we lay out this idea of the hybrid organization in one mission. Is there an example you could share where you guys have implemented this into the business world, and it's worked beautifully since implementation? Yeah. One of our very first clients, actually, that we worked with is a big lawn and garden enterprise. And they approached us and said, you know, part of the initial conversation was,

You know, there's a, there's a smaller sort of startup approach in this space now where local competitors are able to eat up little pieces of the market. We move as this big, you know, very powerful global organization, but we have small threats around the country that are harder to keep up with now than they ever were in the past. And so they started to take a very deliberate look at their operating rhythm and realized, you know, synchronizing around the sort of the quarterly. calendar that Enterprise has come to know and love isn't getting us there. And so they they played around with it for quite a while and ended up on a on a weekly cadence where they would synchronize they have you know, say 10,000 people in their organization. They would synchronize about the top 10% of that in a distributed fashion every week. So you've got this really large forum where everybody's gathered synchronizing around what the problems look right now at that moment and then they could

decentralized for the remainder of the week. So that became their standard operating rhythm. But being that it's lawn and garden, obviously the years varies. In the spring, everybody's very busy going to work in their yards. So their cadence had to increase. So they could speed that up to, you know, every other day or daily if there was an emergency sort of communication structures. And then in the off season, when they're doing mostly marketing, research, et cetera, they could extend that window out to, you know, every other week or every third week or a monthly sort of forum where they re-synchronize one another. So it becomes a flexible sort of approach, but the key is making the organization comfortable with the idea that when we do this sort of forum, we have this sort of conversation, we are creating this sense of shared consciousness, the shared understanding of what matters right now so that we can go into, to your point, these windows. of empowered execution where you can truly decentralized down to the to the organization, to those

that are closest to these fast-moving problems. So it made me think of when I was reading this part of your work. There was a guy named Chris Zuck. I don't know if you know Chris. He works at Bain, one of the partners. He wrote a book called The Founders Mentality. And a really great episode we did. He's just a supremely smart guy.

But he talks about when it comes to the founder's mentality of having an aversion to bureaucracy and a front line obsession. And I've always remembered it since he told me that and said I read it in his book, The Finders Mentality. I feel like there's a lot of parallel and similar messages that you and him and Chris Zook, the two Chrises are sharing when it comes to an aversion of bureaucracy. Because as organizations and companies get bigger and a lot of people listening work at organizations like this, I don't know if it's any one person's fault,

but this bureaucratic environment can be created and not having an obsession on the front line, meaning the people who touch and talk and speak with potentially your customers, you get away from that because organization gets so big. How do you implement processes or practices to avoid bureaucracy and potentially help staying obsessed with the front line? Yeah, it's a great way to look at it. And I'll have to pick up Chris's book because there's probably some very similar. I should probably introduce you guys.

You would hit it off. You're both really smart, thoughtful, curious guys. I love that. But yeah, it's a similar paradigm, right? Where I think the way that I would say, McChrystal in our organization solved for that was admittedly sort of unintentional. Like this started as a journey toward, well, this isn't working, right? The traditional approach isn't working. So what is working?

Well, it works when we're all talking a lot. It works when we, you know, kind of in each other's heads. Our question started with this idea of scaling the effectiveness of a high-performance small team up to the enterprise level. That's what we lay out kind of in one mission. What makes small teams great? And could you scale that up? And one of the things that make small teams great is what you just described. like you're just focused on the problem, right? You know there's a, there's a bigger thing that you're

part of, but what you're really hyper-focused on is the issue at hand, right? And that's the design of a small team. That mentality is exactly what we took into this post-9-11 conflict. And so we had great small teams that could focus at the issue level, but they couldn't interconnect and they didn't see the, they weren't tied up to the big picture fast enough to be able to move with autonomy. So our leaders started to take that small team behavior up to the enterprise. And I think what solved the issue you're describing and allowed the organization to live on two parallel paths, one being traditional bureaucratic focus, the other being focused down onto the ground was the transparency of the communication model. So we had, you know, literally thousands of people re-synchronizing

themselves every 24 hours on that on that very aggressive operating rhythm that we just we just spoke about and what that allowed for was senior leaders to remain in close contact with the issues on the ground without having to leave their office so to speak and go down and just put out the fire you know and that's we see this all the time in industry now there's there's so much change that even the best leaders that really want to look up and out are constantly pulled into these tactical level decisions because those decisions have more and more every day have strategic impact potentially. You know, a viral online campaign, it's a tactical level issue, but it could, you know, it could have massive impacts on your stock value within the next couple hours. So of course,

the C-suite has to drop everything and push back down to that level. And that might take a day or two to resolve or more. And there's no up and out thinking going on at that point. And so that's why we suggest this hybrid model where McChrystal didn't throw away the org chart. We were still a military top-down structure. Everybody wore rank and understood who ran what and where the accountability sat. But layered into that was this series of interconnected networks that were constantly changing. And so every 24 hours when we were re-synchronized, the senior leaders could get a snapshot out of what was going on the ground, provide thoughts and connect dots as they saw them. Then you go into these windows of decentralized empowered execution.

Teams on the ground run against the issue like they're highly capable of doing. And the senior leaders could then think up and out and know, okay, everybody has enough shared consciousness. We're realigned as an organization. I can think up and out. You run against the problem. And then we'll repeat that again in 22 hours. And we just lived on that very aggressive cadence for years on end.

And so this global enterprise really did start to feel like that, that small team that we were also comfortable with. The, I like this one part when you, at the transition point, when you'd gone from a leader within a unit to a connector of multiple units in a matter of days. And you got this advice or this message from General Crystal. He said, remember your, because I think, the reason I'm sharing this because I think it could apply to people in the, business world. But he said, remember, your position has little formal authority, but massive reach for many of the organizations we interact with. Their entire opinion of our organization will be shaped off the tone of your emails, the courtesy you give their staff, and the respect you show for their mission. And I thought that was great advice he gave to you in regards to when

you're making this transition, just the influence and the impact you could have, just thinking about the tone of the way you interact and communicate with so many people because you're now a connector of multiple units. And this had happened. You'd been promoted just like most people get promoted. One day you're this and the next day you're that. And so you have to, there's not always though a time to get acclimated. You've got to be ready to go as you start. And so I'm curious what you thought as you got that advice from General McChrystal. Well, yeah, that was as I was coming onto his staff to be to fill the aid position and that was sort of incoming guidance from him which was uh it was fascinating to hear but i obviously raised the bar in my mind of realizing

wow this is a at this level of staff you do have this global reach of uh sort of relationship management etc and you know any senior leader can tell you examples of you know walking into a sales call or to give a pitch or to meet with a new partner. And from the moment you sit down, you're already behind the eight ball because three weeks earlier, four layers down, there were some snide comments between, you know, junior members of the team on each side about where to hold the meeting or, you know, who is going to control the agenda, whatever the case may be. And that anxiety trickles its way up. And then you come in, it's the first time you've sat down to to give the pitch, and everybody's already in a bad mood because they sensed that your staff

was being sort of overly aggressive in putting together the meeting or something like that. All these little details that were well outside of your purview as a senior leader. And fortunately for us, McChrystal and our other senior leadership team, they were super cognizant of that. And I'm sure it was a learned lesson. I came in, you know, multiple years into their running of the organization. But it was a great lesson for me to say, hey, every, part of this organization has impact. And so then I would start to sort of keep the mental math.

And if he was going to, you know, an important meeting somewhere, I'd realize, wow, I'm going to send 14 emails and have six phone calls and, you know, somebody's going to do a site survey so that our senior leadership can sit down and have an effective, you know, 30-minute meeting four weeks from now. And if we get the tone or the way that we come across and any one of those interactions is negative or condescending or bullying, whatever the case may be, we're really undermining our senior leader's ability to have the right type of conversation when it matters. And so you have to be, I think, in today's world, even more so, hypervigilant about constantly extending respect and understanding other folks' perspective on whatever issue

might be at hand. And then you have the meeting and then it's up to you, but you want to set an organization, not both sides, up for success in the moment by really being conscious of everything it takes to get people to that table to have the discussion. And it was a real eye-opener for me and obviously stuck with me. Well, I just think it's great advice for people who haphazardly shoot off emails from time to time. And that's why I like the fact that he was, he just seems from a leadership perspective to give this vividly clear message and communication, which I appreciate so much from a leader. And it was great advice that could say, hey, Chris, remember the, the tone you have, the way you do things, just to be mindful, be thoughtful because it has such

wide-ranging impact on the other people that you interact with. And I think people can forget that. As we close up here, Chris, I really, one, really appreciate you joining me. I know you're on a mini vacation with your wife. I would imagine now that as you in your line of work from what you've previously done to what you currently do and now with this book, that you get asked for advice on a regular basis. And I think I'd be mistaken to not do that right now to close out this conversation is if somebody comes to you and they're looking to grow in their career, whether it was to lead, to coach, to manage, whatever it may be, just to have put together a great career,

what type of advice or what are the few nuggets that you share with people when they ask you of how to put together a great career? That's a good question. So I give you an example. I talk to a lot of guys as they're getting out of the military just because I've been out since 2012. And so anytime somebody's getting out, like, hey, give me a call and I'll help you through the transition. So that's the space that I'm most familiar with professionals transitioning out of the military. But I think a lot of the advice applies across boundaries for somebody getting out of college, etc.

And I always start with friends especially, say, hey, don't think about, you know, how much money you want to make or not necessarily even the industry you want to be in. Start with what matters most to you. Start with your family, your wife, your kids. Sort of visualize what sort of lifestyle you want to live. Like, do you want to coach Little League, be home every day at 5 o'clock, have weekends free, et cetera. That's what's really important to you and your family. That's totally admirable. Then build a profession around that. Think about where you want to live to accomplish that.

Think about what sort of careers avail themselves to that and then build up from there. And if you want to go the other way, like I want to run a Fortune 1000 company someday, like, okay, that's also very important and respectable. Build towards that. Know what you're sacrificing on other fronts, time at home, et cetera, have that discussion with your family, and then work towards that. So sort of world build in your own mind, what Wright looks like in 10 or 15 years, and then build into that. I, Stan McChrystal and I teach a leadership seminar together up at the Jackson Institute at Yale University. And part of the syllabus is we, and we do this ourselves every year, the students write a letter to.

to themselves, what they want to look like as a leader in five years. And so I find it a great practice, and I'd recommend it to anyone that's considering this sort of, any sort of professional transition or career mapping. Get out a piece of paper and sort of world build. Describe yourself in five years to yourself. And what do all the outside variables look like? Where do you live? How much time do you have with your family? What phase are your kids and wife in or spouse in at that period of life. And then that gives you a roadmap to build toward. I think sort of half-hazardly going through life and hoping for the best, it can be interesting, but it's harder to hit some sort of strategic goal unless you've really designed it out in your own head. So I think

exercises like that are in value, but I recommend to people all the time. That's great stuff, Chris. Thank you again, man, for being here. I really appreciate it. I would encourage everyone. I actually already put this into my Mindful Monday email to buy, go get one mission, how leaders build a team of teams by Chris Fussell. Really good. A fantastic follow-up to team of teams, which is just, I think,

a groundbreaking book as well by you and General Stanley McChrystal. So really appreciate you being here. It's good to have you on again. And as I've said before, man, I appreciate the conversations we had in between. I absolutely want to continue as we both progress. man. Thanks, Ryan. Always great to catch up with you. Congrats on all you're doing on the show. It's really fantastic.

Thanks, man. Really appreciate it, Chris. Bye, buddy. Talk to soon. All right. Bye. This episode of The Learning Leader Show is over, but we have plenty more to keep you locked in until next time. Head over to Learning Leadershow.com for more information and to request your favorite entrepreneur, CEO, world-class athlete, or anyone else that inspires you. You can also talk to Ryan directly by reaching out to him on Twitter at Ryan Hawk 12. Thanks again, and we'll see you next time on The Learning Leader Show. This episode is brought to you by my friends at Callaway Golf.

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