When General Stanley McChrystal took command of the Joint Special Operations Task Force in Iraq in 2003, he quickly realized that conventional military tactics were failing. The allied forces had a huge advantage in numbers, equipment and training - but none of the enemy's speed and flexibility.

McChrystal and his colleagues discarded a century of conventional wisdom to create a 'team of teams that combined extremely transparent communication with decentralized decision-making authority.

Faster, flatter, and more flexible, the task force beat back al-Qaeda.