Chris Fussell

In the military, and in business, the most elite and effective teams I've seen or been part of are filled with individuals who take responsibility for their choices. Life is a series of decisions that you make and actions you take, not a series of things that happen to you. ”

As I found while leading special operations forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, if the problem is interconnected, your organization must be, as well. ”

The Defense Department is prone to all of the 'traditional bureaucratic rules,' which is the same thing you'll find in most traditional government systems. ”

As you move up a traditional, sort of bureaucratic structure, there's a certain point at which you realize, 'Well, I'm not really on the implementation or execution side - I'm not on the battlefield. I'm an operations person who's overseeing multiple units that are out on the ground doing the job.' ”

Most teams are naturally flat; they have fewer members than a large enterprise, which allows for intimacy and trust to form. This makes collaborative problem solving in individual teams more straightforward. ”

Before you can trust your team to make decisions better than you would have, you need to build their capability to connect the dots. ”

Silos and bureaucracy are well-oiled machines in corporate America, but they are ultimately perpetuated by individual behavior. If we start behaving differently, we can create change. In other words, shifting your focus onto the team - or the ship as a whole, not just yourself - will have meaningful impact. ”

In any bureaucracy, there's a natural tendency to let the system become an excuse for inaction. ”

The 21st century is dominated by networks because the introduction of the information age, we can suddenly create, free flow these globally distributed, organic, shaped networks of individuals. ”

The information age has ushered in a networked and interdependent world, one in which challenges and opportunities appear and disappear faster than traditional organizational models can manage. ”