Team of Teams

When General Stanley McChrystal took command of elite American special operations forces fighting al-Qaeda in Iraq, he found that his forces, for all their advantages in numbers, equipment and training, lacked the enemy's speed and flexibility. With co-authors Tantum Collins, David Silverman and Chris Fussell, he describes how his force abandoned a century of management thinking built on efficiency and remade itself as a network, pairing very open communication with decentralized decision-making. The result was a team of teams able to push back al-Qaeda. The authors argue that the same shift can work in companies, startups, charities and governments, citing cases from hospital emergency rooms to NASA.

Walmart chief executive Doug McMillon put it among his top six inspiring reads of 2016.