Chris Fussell

This is a follow-up to Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World. If you haven't read it, don't worry - everything you need to know is summarized here. While McChrystal USA (Ret.), Gen. Stanley A.'s book presented the Team of Teams model, this book is a kind of missing manual on how to implement it.

The content of this book is solid. The whole Team of Teams model might not be groundbreaking, especially for modern and agile companies, but the fact it's pretty simple doesn't mean that its implementation is easy. On contrary, it requires a deep cultural change and collective mindset shift for the whole organization. This book shows what it takes to flatten hierarchies, bridge silos, and deliver at speed and scale. It describes in detail real-life examples of transformations, highlighting possible challenges and solutions that were used to overcome them.

This subject is exciting, stories of organizations going through a work revolution are intriguing, the impact of the new way of thinking about work and organizational design could be huge! BUT somehow this book manages to make it dull and uninspiring. There is no passion, clear narrative, and flow, which makes reading this book a drag. The same ideas are repeated multiple times, without adding a new perspective or context to them, and described in a distanced and formal language that doesn't engage the reader at all.

As much as I was interested in this book's insights and find them valuable, its listening experience was terrible. I often caught myself drifting away with my thoughts and needed to force myself to focus on the audiobook. The frequent changes in the recording quality didn't make it easier either. Great content, but not-so-great delivery.… (meer)

In looking for ideas on how to improve relative to my work I read much on various management/leadership and technology topics. This was one of those searches for new ideas on which to build improvement. It came recommended to me by someone from work and seemed to begin with much promise, but I found I kept waiting for the ideas and new concepts to come. The first three-fourths of this book seems to focus on building the argument for the last fourth, and when I got to the solutions, I found them relatively stale and uninspiring. Some of the stories and examples in the book were entertaining, but I never uncovered anything of significant value.… (meer)