target audience: TECH BUYER Publication date: Apr 2023 - Document type: IDC Perspective - Doc Document number: # US50544223
Leading Team-of-Teams Technology Organizations
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Abstract
This IDC Perspective helps CIOs understand what team-of-teams organizations are, why the model is a useful construct for IT governance, and what the key attributes are. It also provides actionable advice on how to implement team-of-teams organizations. Many IT teams are efficient yet siloed, losing the benefits of shared purpose, information, and talent. They can also flounder in confronting large-scale complex, or "wicked," problems that keep changing in form and impact. U.S. Army General Stanley McChrystal confronted a similar problem in leading the Joint Special Operations Task Force in Afghanistan, where he was responsible for counterterrorism units, including the Navy SEALs, the Army Rangers, and several classified units. He realized that his soldiers were winning battles but losing the war in large part due to siloed teams directed by distant leadership in the United States that lacked a real-time understanding of "on the ground" situations. His response was to create the team-of-teams model to break down the walls and build cooperation and collaboration. McChrystal's team-of-teams model is one way that CIOs can solve team leadership and performance challenges using governance designed for dealing with complex, ever-changing problems and situations at scale.
"Wars in distant lands would seem to have little in common with IT operations in modern enterprises, but look closer and similarities emerge," says Marc Strohlein, adjunct research advisor with IDC's IT Executive Program (IEP). "Both are characterized by unpredictability, resource constraints, knowledge and information gaps, lack of visibility to what is happening, and, most of all, communications and directions that are too little, too late."