In any bureaucracy, there's a natural tendency to let the system become an excuse for inaction.
When we first met, I was probably six layers down in the military structure, but General McChrystal at that time was a soldier's leader, and he was part of the task force. So everyone developed close relationships.
When the collective mentality of any organization is self and self-preservation first, it's a sure sign of pending doom.
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.'
As the insurgency in Iraq started to grow, we realized this is a connected network of individual actors that can move at light speed.
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.
