The wisdom of teams
Teams are the key to improving performance in all kinds of organizations. Yet today's business leaders consistently overlook opportunities to exploit their potential, confusing teams with teamwork, empowerment, or participative management. In The Wisdom of Teams, two senior McKinsey & Company consultants argue that we cannot meet the challenges ahead - from total quality to customer service to innovation - without teams. Teams are turning companies around. Motorola relied heavily on teams to surpass its Japanese competition in producing the lightest, smallest, and highest-quality cellular phones. At 3M, teams are critical to meeting the company's well-publicized goal of producing half of each year's revenues from the previous five years' innovations. And from Desert Storm to life-saving surgeries, Kodak's Zebra Team proved the worth of black-and-white film manufacturing in a world where color was king. The Wisdom of Teams includes dozens of stories and case examples involving real people and situations. Their accomplishments, insights, and enthusiasm are eloquent testament to the power of teams. Katzenbach and Smith talked with hundreds of people in more than fifty different teams in thirty companies to discover what differentiates various levels of team performance, where and how teams work best, and how to enhance their effectiveness.
Stats for nerds
2recommend
2mentions
2people
2011–2018years
100% recommend
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Not sure if these count as textbooks by most peoples measures, but they have been textbooks for me.
[1]Overcoming the Five Dysfunctions of a Team
[2]The Wal-Mart Triumph: Inside the World’s #1 Company
[3]Guerilla Marketing
[4]The Lords of Strategy
[5]Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
[6] The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive
[7]The Deming Management Method
[8]Creativity Inc.
[9]The Wisdom of Teams
[10]On Communication
[11]On Managing Yourself
[12]The Art of Facilitation
[13]Death by Meeting
[14]Good Business: Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning
[15]Makers and Takers: The Rise of Finance and the Fall of American Business
1. https://www.amazon.com/Overcoming-Five-Dysfunctions-Team-Fac... 2. https://www.amazon.ca/Wal-Mart-Triumph-Inside-Worlds-Company... 3. https://www.amazon.com/Guerilla-Marketing-Inexpensive-Strate... 4. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1591397820?ref_=cm_sw_r_awd... 5. http://www.amazon.com/Influence-Psychology-Persuasion-Revise... 6. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000079XXQ 7. http://www.amazon.com/Deming-Management-Method-Mary-Walton/d... 8. https://www.amazon.com/Creativity-Inc-Overcoming-Unseen-Insp... 9. https://www.amazon.com/The-Wisdom-Teams-High-Performance-Org... 10. https://www.amazon.com/Communication-featured-Necessary-Pers... 11. https://www.amazon.com/Managing-Yourself-Measure-Clayton-Chr... 12. https://www.amazon.com/Art-Facilitation-Essentials-Meetings-... 13. https://www.amazon.com/Death-Meeting-Leadership-Solving-Busi... 14. https://www.amazon.com/Good-Business-Leadership-Making-Meani... 15. https://www.amazon.com/Makers-Takers-Finance-American-Busine...
- Congratulations on becoming the lead. You already got some excellent advise in this thread.
I found some good advice about managing and leading teams in books:
"The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-Performance Organization" by Jon R. Katzenbach, Douglas K. Smith
"Leading at the Edge : Leadership Lessons from the Extraordinary Saga of Shackleton's Antarctic Expedition" by Dennis N. T. Perkins, Margaret P. Holtman, Paul R. Kessler, Catherine McCarthy.
Few suggestions from personal experiences:
About not delegating, getting your hands dirty can play to your benefit if positioned right as trying to understand what team members goes through in their activities so that you can make better decisions that are in best interests of team members.
Consider your team lead role as mentoring role and not as a "manager" role. Allow people to make mistakes and do lesson learnt type sessions.
Depending on the size of team, have lunch/ informal gathering as a team and also meet with individual team members informally at regular basis.
Watch patterns and signs in how team behaves around you. If they are quiet around you or always agreeing with you, you have a problem.
Related
Overcoming the five dysfunctions of a team
1 recommend · 2
Team of Teams
17 recommend · 25
Inspired
42 recommend · 49
Business model generation
33 recommend · 51
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
44 recommend · 66
The Lean Startup
284 recommend · 768
