Conventional wisdom says that military units are most likely to succeed in the field when they follow strict command-and-control procedures -- when they operate within a rigid, top-down hierarchical organization: Officers at the top of the military pyramid issue orders, and the grunts on the ground swiftly and unquestioningly obey and execute those orders.

That's the conventional wisdom. But according to General Peter Schoomaker, 53, commander in chief of the U.S. Special Operations Command, that's also an outmoded, inaccurate, and dangerous model for leadership -- and for followership. The armies that will win in the future -- and, by extension, those organizations that will wage successful campaigns of any kind, whether they're commercial, military, or otherwise -- will be those that marshal "creative solutions in ambiguous circumstances," says Schoomaker. "Everybody's got to know how to be a leader."

More than almost any leader of almost any organization, Schoomaker understands the challenges of change and the demands of adaptability. The end of the Cold War signaled the beginning of a new era for the Special Operations Forces (SOF) -- and the need for a fundamental reevaluation of SOF's mission, identity, and practices. Previously, SOF's component parts -- the Army Special Forces (including the Delta Force, the Green Berets, and the Army Rangers), the Navy seals, and the Air Force Special Operations squadrons -- had been charged with carrying out the U.S. military's most complex and clandestine missions. Members of these elite units fashioned themselves as fierce warriors and daring espionage agents, and the gutsiest SOF combatants became stars and heroes.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union came the need for SOF to reevaluate its role and to reinvent itself. "We know that we're going to have fewer 'wars' but a lot more conflicts," Schoomaker says. "There's a real blurring between the definitions of 'war' and 'peace,' 'domestic' and 'nondomestic,' 'economic' and 'military.' All of this means that we need to be able to thrive in uncertainty. Our role is to support U.S. foreign policy. Increasingly, that means trying to keep large conflicts from breaking out -- while also maintaining the ability to transition quickly to combat operations and, if necessary, to spearhead a decisive victory."

Take, for example, an assignment that SOF received in 1991: Several dozen highly trained soldiers were dropped into Kurdish refugee camps along the Iraqi-Turkish border. The refugees had fled their homes after a failed rebellion against Saddam Hussein, and hundreds of thousands of them were crowded into hastily constructed camps. They were freezing in the cold, and many were starving to death. On the morning of the SOF team's arrival at one camp, a riot broke out around a food convoy, and seven people were killed.

When members of the team arrived on the scene, they knew little about conditions in the camps. Nor did they know what kind of reception they would get from the refugees. So the commander of the unit turned to Captain Steve Damon, then 32, and said, "Go in there and get me an assessment." Damon quickly assembled a 12-person team, grabbed a camcorder and a radio, and headed into the camp. "This was my first experience with a refugee camp," Damon recalls. "I didn't know what I was doing, but I knew that we had to do something."