Someone wicked this way comes... Things are not right at the World Walkers Association. Sure, Maggie and Killian torched Hollywood, but that's never been a problem before. Unfortunately, Maggie's new boss is a stickler for the rules and when heads roll, this time it will be literal. On the run, Maggie and Killian have to take matters into their own hands and they fall into a web of ancient Roman artifacts, elfin smuggling rings, and double crosses. Bounty hunters are on their tail. World Walkers are disappearing right and left. And who let the Medusa out? This is just the opportunity the bad guys were looking for. Is a greater evil now at work? Or is it just another lousy day at M&K Tracking? Book Five in the Maggie MacKay: Magical Tracker series. WARNING: This book contains cussing, brawling, and unladylike behavior. Proceed with caution.
From the New York Times bestselling author of My Share of the Task and Leaders, a manual for leaders looking to make their teams more adaptable, agile, and unified in the midst of change. When General Stanley McChrystal took command of the Joint Special Operations Task Force in 2004, he quickly realized that conventional military tactics were failing. Al Qaeda in Iraq was a decentralized network that could move quickly, strike ruthlessly, then seemingly vanish into the local population. The allied forces had a huge advantage in numbers, equipment, and training—but none of that seemed to matter. To defeat Al Qaeda, they would have to combine the power of the world’s mightiest military with the agility of the world’s most fearsome terrorist network. They would have to become a "team of teams"—faster, flatter, and more flexible than ever. In Team of Teams, McChrystal and his colleagues show how the challenges they faced in Iraq can be relevant to countless businesses, nonprofits, and organizations today. In periods of unprecedented crisis, leaders need practical management practices that can scale to thousands of people—and fast. By giving small groups the freedom to experiment and share what they learn across the entire organization, teams can respond more quickly, communicate more freely, and make better and faster decisions. Drawing on compelling examples—from NASA to hospital emergency rooms—Team of Teams makes the case for merging the power of a large corporation with the agility of a small team to transform any organization.
From the co-author of the New York Times bestseller Team of Teams, a practical guide for leaders looking to make their organizations more interconnected and unified in the midst of sudden change. Too often, companies end up with teams stuck in their own silos, pursuing goals and metrics in isolation. Their traditional autocratic structures create stability, scalability, and predictability -- but in a world that demands rapid adaptation to a new reality, this traditional model simply doesn’t work. In Team of Teams, retired four-star General Stanley McChrystal and former Navy SEAL Chris Fussell made the case for a new organizational model combining the agility, adaptability, and cohesion of a small team with the power and resources of a giant organization. Now, in One Mission, Fussell channels all his experiences, both military and corporate, into powerful strategies for unifying isolated and distrustful teams. This practical guide will help leaders in any field implement the Team of Teams approach to tear down their silos improve collaboration, and avoid turf wars. By committing to one higher mission, organizations develop an overall capability that far exceeds the sum of their parts. From Silicon Valley software giant Intuit to a government agency on the plains of Oklahoma, organizations have used Fussell’s methods to unite their people around a single compelling vision, resulting in superior performance. One Mission will help you follow their example to a more agile and resilient future.
You Are the Team is a book that will easily and dramatically improve the way your team works together by literally changing the heart and mind of every member of your team. It's a book for you, your team and entire organization. Many leaders struggle with getting members of their team to help and assist each other; to be direct, candid and respectful in their communication; to actively participate in meetings-providing ideas and passionately discussing important topics; to trust each other; to stop engaging in negative talk and even gossip; and to take accountability for their job and performance... to name just a few. You Are the Team combats the "Teammate Me Culture," which is when members of the team care more about their own needs than the team's needs. It inspires teammates to: *Serve each other *Put others and the team first *Tell the truth and be transparent *Keep commitments *Be direct and honest in discussions *Take accountability *Learn from mistakes *Seek honest feedback from teammates *Improve personal gratitude *Refrain from negativity and gossip *Compliment teammates more frequently *Celebrate teammates successes *Extend more kindness *Seek to understand teammates first before reacting *Demonstrate greater empathy towards teammates *Get it done and then some *Improve personal focus on goals *Bring solutions, not problems *Invest in personal development *Inspire and lead Would you agree that the above actions improve teamwork? Could your team improve by teammates implementing even just a couple of these concepts? You Are the Team is both engaging and practical. Author Michael Rogers uses a variety of entertaining stories to highlight the concepts in the book. Introspective questions are at the end of each section to help teammates reflect on how they are currently applying each of the important team concepts. The end of the book includes an assessment with 27 questions to gauge the overall effectiveness of teammates. Becoming a successful team begins with teammates who want to provide more value than they receive. You Are the Team was written to help members of teams understand the value they bring. Order a copy for you, for your team, for your entire organization. Michael has over 20 years of experience working with teams in business, sports, and a variety of volunteer organizations. One common theme in his consulting work has been that the best teams are made up of teammates who are committed to and invested in their team and its outcomes. He has found, without exception, that teams consisting of teammates who regularly practice his 6 B's of selflessness, trustworthiness, humbleness, positivity, respectfulness, and greatness achieve extraordinary teamwork. When Michael sat down to write You Are the Team, he wanted to write a book that could be easily understood by anyone reading it, a book that was inspiring-even life changing, a book that was engaging and a book that could be quickly applied by every member of the team. Many are finding that he did just that. Are you a leader who wishes you could get your team to work together better? Are you a leader who needs to boost results? Are you a leader who wishes your team cared more about their work and the outcomes of the team? You Are the Team is that one book that will change your team and organization long term.
In his classic book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Patrick Lencioni laid out a groundbreaking approach for tackling the perilous group behaviors that destroy teamwork. Here he turns his focus to the individual, revealing the three indispensable virtues of an ideal team player. In The Ideal Team Player, Lencioni tells the story of Jeff Shanley, a leader desperate to save his uncle’s company by restoring its cultural commitment to teamwork. Jeff must crack the code on the virtues that real team players possess, and then build a culture of hiring and development around those virtues. Beyond the fable, Lencioni presents a practical framework and actionable tools for identifying, hiring, and developing ideal team players. Whether you’re a leader trying to create a culture around teamwork, a staffing professional looking to hire real team players, or a team player wanting to improve yourself, this book will prove to be as useful as it is compelling.
Effective software teams are essential for any organization to deliver value continuously and sustainably. But how do you build the best team organization for your specific goals, culture, and needs? Team Topologies is a practical, step-by-step, adaptive model for organizational design and team interaction based on four fundamental team types and three team interaction patterns. It is a model that treats teams as the fundamental means of delivery, where team structures and communication pathways are able to evolve with technological and organizational maturity. In Team Topologies, IT consultants Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais share secrets of successful team patterns and interactions to help readers choose and evolve the right team patterns for their organization, making sure to keep the software healthy and optimize value streams. Team Topologies is a major step forward in organizational design for software, presenting a well-defined way for teams to interact and interrelate that helps make the resulting software architecture clearer and more sustainable, turning inter-team problems into valuable signals for the self-steering organization.
There is a competitive advantage out there, arguably more powerful than any other. Is it superior strategy? Faster innovation? Smarter employees? No, New York Times best-selling author, Patrick Lencioni, argues that the seminal difference between successful companies and mediocre ones has little to do with what they know and how smart they are and more to do with how healthy they are. In this book, Lencioni brings together his vast experience and many of the themes cultivated in his other best-selling books and delivers a first: a cohesive and comprehensive exploration of the unique advantage organizational health provides. Simply put, an organization is healthy when it is whole, consistent and complete, when its management, operations and culture are unified. Healthy organizations outperform their counterparts, are free of politics and confusion and provide an environment where star performers never want to leave. Lencioni’s first non-fiction book provides leaders with a groundbreaking, approachable model for achieving organizational health—complete with stories, tips and anecdotes from his experiences consulting to some of the nation’s leading organizations. In this age of informational ubiquity and nano-second change, it is no longer enough to build a competitive advantage based on intelligence alone. The Advantage provides a foundational construct for conducting business in a new way—one that maximizes human potential and aligns the organization around a common set of principles.
A proliferation of new technologies has lulled many into thinking that we actually have to think less about how we communicate. In fact, communicating and collaborating across time, distance, and cultures has never been more complex or difficult. Written as a series of bulleted tips drawn from client experiences and best practices, Leading Effective Virtual Teams: Overcoming Time and Distance to Achieve Exceptional Results presents practical tips to help leaders engage and motivate their geographically dispersed project team members. If you’re a leader of any type of virtual team and want to help your team members collaborate more effectively, then buy this book. You will learn how to: Build trust and cultivate relationships, virtually, across your team Design and facilitate virtual meetings that are focused and engaging Influence without authority Motivate and galvanize a virtual team for top performance Blend asynchronous and synchronous communications for better virtual collaboration Navigate cross-cultural and generational differences in the absence of vital visual cues Assess skills, strengths, aptitudes, and preferences from afar Handle other tough issues that can trip up virtual teams The ideas in this book are based on Nancy Settle-Murphy’s decades of experience working as a change management consultant, facilitator, and trainer for project teams around the world. Designed to be read section by section in any order, this book shares approaches and techniques to help you address some of the toughest challenges virtual team leaders face, including keeping team members engaged from afar.
