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create value, what teams are supposed to achieve, the technical skills each team member is expected to contribute, the processes by which the work will be managed, and the cultural norms and mindsets of constructive collaboration that will guide behavior. The best operating systems embed an ethos of continuous improvement throughout the organization, not just in a single team or department. They are structured enough to provide consistent guidance but loose enough to accommodate changing conditions, priorities, data, and needs.The hands-on world of auto manufacturing produced one of the earliest and best-known examples of a cross-functional team operating system: the Toyota Production System. Developed in the 1950s, it combined standard work routines with performance monitoring and metrics thatflagged issues and opportunities. Frontline managers were trained to collaborate closely with teams from a range of disciplines to resolve problems and drive continuous improvement.In the 1970s and 1980s, as the software industry started to take shape, the idea of a team operating system moved from the physical to the digital world. Developers began using signals to track the quality and performance of their code, enabling them to adapt quickly when their work generated an error. Ultimately, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, this work gave rise to agile, one of today%u2019s foremost team operating systems and a mainstay of complex operations ranging from chip manufacturing to software development.Rob Tringali is a sports photographer who has captured everything from the Super Bowl and the Olympics to obscure sporting events and high school football games.At McKinsey, we have created a new team operating system%u2014known as the Way We Work (WWW)%u2014that reframes, reshapes, and improves on the principles of agile teamwork. To do their jobs well, our team leaders need to be able to bring together the best thinking, analysis, coding, and design expertise from our 7,000-plus experts while working with other colleagues to build strong relationships and think strategically. Designed to foster this collaboration across geographies and at scale, WWW can be used by any team, regardless of size, location, or mission.Consider the example of a Latin American bank that called