Business
Battlefield Tactics for Business Success
Lesson time 01:22:15 min
Your org’s moving slow. Your competitors aren’t. When the U.S. military fell behind, Gen. McChrystal rewired his teams for radical transparency and wartime speed. Now he’s giving you his strategies to sync up, move fast, and out-execute the competition.
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Topics include: 21st Century Leadership From Silos to Synergy Risky Business Character and Discipline
Battlefield Tactics for Business Success
From war zones to boardrooms, General Stanley McChrystal shows you how to lead fast, build trust, and win under the highest of stakes.
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STANLEY MCCHRYSTAL: I arrived in Iraq to a scene of increasing mayhem. Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi was the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq. Allahu Akbar! STANLEY MCCHRYSTAL: His terrorist tactics were so cold blooded, almost psychopathic in their violence, but effective. By 2006, our task force had gotten so good that I was utterly confident we'd get Zarqawi. Then, we got a lead. We see him, we got him in our sights. We're going to capture this guy. And then, we get word that one of the helicopters is broken. He's going to slip through our fingers yet again. The task force commander below me came to me, and he said, I want to drop a bomb on the house. RADIO OPERATOR: There is a flight of F-16s from the United States Air Force. They have now been told where the target is. STANLEY MCCHRYSTAL: I'd spent three years establishing a model that we'd come to call a team of teams, connecting separate teams into one powerful, unified organization, building a culture on the battlefield where soldiers felt more empowered to make decisions on their own. You need to let them do it. In that critical moment, I just had to watch and wait. In the military and the business world, the old rules are dead. Everything's changing at lightning speed. We have weapons and systems that simply go faster than they ever did before. The speed at which we can produce new products, bring them to market, upset competitors, changes the very nature of business. Organizations that aren't adaptable are like armies on the battlefield that haven't changed. They lose. And eventually, they go away. I'm a retired four star general and commander of US and coalition forces in Afghanistan. I commanded JSOC, the nation's most elite Special Operations forces. I deployed operators from the Navy SEALs, the Army's Delta Force, US Army Rangers, and a range of other specialized units to push back al-Qaeda in Iraq and across the region. Many of the structures I helped establish, the adaptations to be more effective, are still in use today. Since retiring from the Army, I've advised fortune 500 companies, taught at Yale, and advised leaders on risk. Under Armor, Bank of America, Intuit, Citibank, Airbnb, Pfizer, Anheuser-Busch. What I've discovered is that whether you're fighting terrorists or competing in the marketplace, the challenges are remarkably similar. Speed, coordination, and the ability to adapt faster than your opponent. From the battlefield to the boardroom, my job has always been the same, to build teams that win under pressure. Now, I want to share my playbook with you. So who should take this class? Well, anybody who wants to be more effective as a leader and a manager, or simply, if you want your organization to be better and you know that you need to be a more effective part of that. I'll help you understand people, process, and culture to create a team of teams. I'm excited to teach you how to increase information sharing, strengthen collaboration and empower execution. You'll learn that common...
About the Instructor
Retired Gen. Stanley McChrystal led America’s most elite forces through chaos, crisis, and war. Now he's sharing his battlefield-tested systems to help you lead when the pressure’s on. In this class, you’ll learn how to make faster decisions, build trust across teams, and turn confusion into clarity—so you can lead with confidence, even when the path ahead isn’t clear.
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General Stanley McChrystal
From war zones to boardrooms, General Stanley McChrystal shows you how to lead fast, build trust, and win under the highest of stakes.
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