Building Team Resilience- My summer in Iraq 2003

Team resilience is a fundamental building block to creating operational resilience throughout an organization. Short background, I have been in private industry for ~ 4 years and prior to that I spent 20+ years in the Marine Corps as an intelligence officer. I currently lead a globally distributed team which is charged with developing operational resilience throughout my organization. The nature of my current role, coupled with the circumstances we find ourselves in with the COVID pandemic inspired me to share a personal experience on building team resilience while deployed to Iraq in the summer 2003.

My team was quite a mixed bag of people and skills. At the time I was a Marine Captain detailed to a US Intelligence Agency and my job was to satisfy some critical National intelligence requirements right on the heels of coalition forces securing Baghdad. As you might expect, it was a pretty chaotic time as the US was sorting out what the post-Saddam era should look like and I would be meandering across the country in that state of chaos. I could have never predicted all the crazy challenges and experiences we would have along the way. While I was mission commander for the activity, I had a mix of military and civilian personnel under my charge to perform the technical aspects of our mission. In addition, I was assigned a Military Police squad from the Arizona National Guard to serve as our security detail. Together, this team would travel over 3500 miles throughout Iraq and operate in northern Iraq, central Iraq, and southern Iraq, all of which had distinct security and cultural variables we had to precariously navigate. At the outset I would offer my team was not very operationally resilient and somewhat analogous to Bill Murray and his platoon from the movie Stripes. Nobody understood each other’s organizations, the team had very little understanding of the operating environment we found ourselves, the team lacked an appreciation for one another's strengths and weaknesses, but there was a mission to be accomplished and off we went. Below are some guiding principles that I believe were instrumental in building our resilience as a team:

Training: First thing I realized with the group was that despite different skillsets and levels of expertise within those skillsets, I needed to train my team to perform at a common baseline level, particularly in basic combat tactics. This wasn't just for my intelligence personnel, but also the National Guardsmen. This meant the first few weeks were relatively slow go as we laboriously drilled quick reaction drills, how to establish suppressive fire to allow another vehicle team to escape an ambush, how to perform route planning, how to use multiple forms of communications to call for help, as well as many other things. This training was non-negotiable and was the first step to getting the team to think and act in unison, as well as identify things in common which led to a host of secondary benefits. These steps were fundamental to building their confidence that not only could we survive Iraq, but we would eventually learn to thrive based on the strength of the team.

Transparency and understanding: As you might expect, my intelligence agency personnel and the National Guardsman from Arizona started off like a middle school dance, each on one side of the gym awkwardly sorting out how to approach the other. Much like the training, getting mutual understanding of what each would be doing on this trek across Iraq and why they were doing it was essential to building trust relationships between the groups that would be essential to our survival over that summer. It started with simple activities such as all the leaders at the same planning meeting along with shared meals and a dedicated focus on getting to know one another and one another's professional skillsets. What started out as a directed activity began to naturally happen as they wanted to involve each other in the work that was sharable (some of the intel stuff was pretty close hold as you might expect). This was particularly eye opening for me personally because our National Guardsmen brought a TON to the table beyond their role as a security detail. They were EMTs, mechanics, vice squad cops, salespeople (yes, believe it or not that was a really useful skill), engineering students etc., all of which dramatically enhanced the adaptability of our team which we exploited many times over the course of that summer. Knowing we had these skills within the team led to a quiet confidence that we could take on a host of challenges if we relied on one another and trusted in the team.

Feedback: One of the things that I found particularly important was to provide candid and constructive feedback to both my intelligence agency personnel and my military police security detail. This was the first time in combat for all of them and Iraq is the kind of place where mistakes can have some life altering consequences. Therefore, when you observe opportunities for improvement it is essential that you seize them. However, ensuring your team is receptive to receiving that feedback is a precursor to delivering it. With that in mind, I made it a point that if it was a crappy or dangerous job I would make every effort to be first in line for the task and just the opposite for things like hot chow, showers, preferred campsite locations or down time. This was immensely useful in setting conditions for that team to listen because they knew I was fully committed to our team's success. The level of receptiveness on their part led to exponential growth over a very short period of time in a number of areas. To name just a few, their situational awareness while outside the wire dramatically improved; their ability to execute quickly and in a controlled fashion made us increasingly proficient in executing our technical mission resulting in reducing our exposure to the adversary; and their ability to cope with some pretty austere conditions (we were outside 24/7 and slept on the ground most nights) allowed us to plan longer and more complex missions which demanded increased vigilance and endurance.

Accountability: Clear delineation of roles and responsibilities is essential. If everyone is in charge of it, no one is in charge of it and that clarity is critical to growing a resilient organization. The knowledge that you are directly accountable for an action has a tendency to get people to step up and decisively tackle the challenge in front of them. Everyone on our team had their role. Route planning, site establishment, coordination with the commander and staff of a forward operating base, reviewing reaction drills with drivers/assistant drivers, training local intelligence personnel, or setting up and tearing down base camp all had a lead and supporting team. One other aspect that was pretty key to maintaining this principle is that if an individual demonstrated they were incapable of the duty assigned we would decisively make adjustments. I only had to do this a couple times for it to sink in that everyone has a role to play and we were reliant on one another for the team's success.

Every day is an opportunity to make a new friend: One of the crazy things about the Iraq operation is that our plan had to dynamically change week to week and it was nearly impossible to say with certainty what day the team would show up in a given city due to the unpredictable nature of the mission we had been given. This meant we often showed up at a forward operating base with very little notice to the base commander that we would be joining him for 1-2 weeks. As you might expect, resources were tight and most forward operating bases didn't have spare gas, chow, racks, sunscreen, bug spray, or vehicle parts for a 6 vehicle convoy of 20+ personnel. To brace against this I had a piece of paper (called a Fragmentary Order or FRAGO) in my pocket that was like a Willy Wonka golden ticket. If I showed it to the Commander he was expected to provide whatever I required. Fortunately, I never had to use it. The first thing our team did when we arrived at a new location was explain who we were, what we were doing (generally speaking of course), how our work would help with that commander's situational awareness, and when not outside the wire on mission we would contribute to training their intelligence personnel on best practices. As a result, we got all the gas, food, and parts we needed because people wanted to help and contribute to the mission we had been assigned. Reason I share this is we grow resilience by helping others and the feedback as a result can be decisive in getting through tough experiences. You cannot make a friend when you need a friend so good to invest in those relationships early.

It goes without saying my summer in 2003 in Iraq was one of my most cherished adventures while wearing a uniform and I could not have done it without that exceptional team, many of whom I keep in routine contact with 17 years later.

Hope you all enjoyed my ramble on personal and team resilience and thank you for taking the time to read this! If you enjoyed it please like and share.