In this completely revised version of his best-selling book, Cross-Functional Teams: Working with Allies, Enemies, and Strangers, author and consultant Glenn Parker updates his definitive practical guide to include his recent work in team rewards and recognition, communications technology, and multicultural and virtual-team issues. This new edition contains fresh examples and additional case studies of successful cross-functional teams from IBM, Parke-Davis, Xerox, Boeing, BOC Gases, government agencies, and more. Parker offers concrete advice and inspiration to team leaders, team members, and senior management. Cross-Functional Teams delivers a team operating manual to executives, team leaders, human resource professionals, and students of organizational behavior and provides a tool kit of assessment surveys, worksheets, checklists, and even sample training programs to help launch and sustain effective teams.
"Great teams are comprised of ordinary people that are empowered and inspired. They are empowered to solve hard problems in ways their customers love yet work for their business. They are inspired with ideas and techniques for quickly evaluating those ideas to discover solutions that work: they are valuable, usable, feasible and viable. This book is about the idea and reality of "achieving extraordinary results from ordinary people". Empowered is the companion to Inspired. It addresses the other half of the problem of building tech products?how to get the absolute best work from your product teams. However, the book's message applies much more broadly than just to product teams. Inspired was aimed at product managers. Empowered is aimed at all levels of technology-powered organizations: founders and CEO's, leaders of product, technology and design, and the countless product managers, product designers and engineers that comprise the teams. This book will not just inspire companies to empower their employees but will teach them how. This book will help readers achieve the benefits of truly empowered teams"--
Cross-functional teams, that is, teams comprised of members from different departments, are an essential element in developing a world class organization. Yet anyone who has tried to build effective cross-functional teams knows that they often fade away; they lack the tools, training, and motivation that would enable them to tackle more challenging tasks. In 40 Tools for Cross-Functional Teams: Building Synergy for Breakthrough Creativity, Walter Michalski cuts through the tangled thicket of team literature to give us a focused and comprehensive guide to building and sustaining cross-functional teams. This book will teach you everything you need to know about cross-functional teams. The author provides 40 carefully selected tools arranged in eight process stages, including getting cross-functional teams up and running, developing synergy/consensus, creatively solving problems, and recognizing and rewarding teams. An engaging book with clear illustrations, 40 Tools for Cross-Functional Teams is based on the same user friendly design of the Tool Navigator's Master Guide for Teams. Each tool is presented in a two or three page spread describing the tool, its function, method for implementation, and example of the tool in use. These 40 tools will assist any company in the creation of cross-functional teams to compete in today's team based corporate environment. Included are discussions of: Why teams fail and tips for assuring team success. Cross-functional teams and how to form them. Forming a cross-functional Six Sigma Team. Team communications and cross-functional synergy. Recognizing and rewarding your teams. Also by Walter J. Michalski: 40 Top Tools for Manufacturers: A Guide for Implementing Powerful Improvement Activities
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.
How to close the gap between strategy and execution Two-thirds of executives say their organizations don’t have the capabilities to support their strategy. In Strategy That Works, Paul Leinwand and Cesare Mainardi explain why. They identify conventional business practices that unintentionally create a gap between strategy and execution. And they show how some of the best companies in the world consistently leap ahead of their competitors. Based on new research, the authors reveal five practices for connecting strategy and execution used by highly successful enterprises such as IKEA, Natura, Danaher, Haier, and Lego. These companies: • Commit to what they do best instead of chasing multiple opportunities • Build their own unique winning capabilities instead of copying others • Put their culture to work instead of struggling to change it • Invest where it matters instead of going lean across the board • Shape the future instead of reacting to it Packed with tools you can use for building these five practices into your organization and supported by in-depth profiles of companies that are known for making their strategy work, this is your guide for reconnecting strategy to execution.
In this business bestseller, how companies can adapt in an era of continuous disruption: a guide to responding to such acute crises as COVID-19. Gold Medalist in Business Disruption/Reinvention. When COVID-19 hit, businesses had to respond almost instantaneously--shifting employees to remote work, repairing broken supply chains, keeping pace with dramatically fluctuating customer demand. They were forced to adapt to a confluence of multiple disruptions inextricably linked to a longer-term, ongoing digital disruption. This book shows that companies that use disruption as an opportunity for innovation emerge from it stronger. Companies that merely attempt to "weather the storm" until things go back to normal (or the next normal), on the other hand, miss an opportunity to thrive. The authors, all experts on business and technology strategy, show that transformation is not a one-and-done event, but a continuous process of adapting to a volatile and uncertain environment. Drawing on five years of research into digital disruption--including a series of interviews with business leaders conducted during the COVID-19 crisis--they offer a framework for understanding disruption and tools for navigating it. They outline the leadership traits, business principles, technological infrastructure, and organizational building blocks essential for adapting to disruption, with examples from real-world organizations. Technology, they remind readers, is not an end in itself, but enables the capabilities essential for surviving an uncertain future: nimbleness, scalability, stability, and optionality.
The problems we face, decisions we make and projects we run are complex. Very rarely do they all reside neatly in one function, team or location.The Cross-Functional Influence Playbook introduces a simple model for getting things done across an organization. This approach covers the things you do every day to build your level of influence (Build Proactively) and those you apply to specific influence opportunities (In-the-Moment).The Playbook is divided into four parts. Part One: Learning to Influence provides stories, tips and ideas on the what it takes to influence cross-functionally. Part Two: Worksheets & Assessments provides tools for assessing and analyzing your past, present and current approaches to influence. Part Three: The Influence Planner takes all the concepts presented in Parts One and Two and puts them into a template that you can complete as you prepare to influence. Part Four: The Influence Journal provides space to track your process, impact and learning.
Escape “Zombie Scrum” and Get Real Value from Agile! “Professional Scrum and Zombie Scrum are mortal enemies in eternal combat. If you relax your guard, Zombie Scrum comes back. This guide helps you stay on your guard, providing very practical tips for identifying when you have become a Zombie and how to stop this from happening. A must-have for any Zombie Scrum hunter.” --Dave West, CEO, Scrum.org “Barry, Christiaan, and Johannes have done a magnificent job of accumulating successful experiences and sharing their inspiring stories in this very practical book. They don't shy away from telling it like it is, which is why their proposals are always as useful as they are grounded in reality.” --Henri Lipmanowicz, cofounder, Liberating Structures Millions of professionals use Scrum. It is the #1 approach to agile software development in the world. Even so, by some estimates, over 70% of Scrum adoptions fall flat. Developers find themselves using “Zombie Scrum” processes that look like Scrum, but are slow, lifeless, and joyless. Scrum is just not working for them. Zombie Scrum Survival Guide reveals why Scrum runs aground and shows how to supercharge your Scrum outcomes, while having a lot more fun along the way. Humorous, visual, and extremely relatable, it offers practical approaches, exercises, and tools for escaping Zombie Scrum. Even if you are surrounded by skeptics, this book will be the antidote to help you build more of what users need, ship faster, improve more continuously, interact more successfully in any team, and feel a whole lot better about what you are doing. Suddenly, one day soon, you will remember: that is why we adopted Scrum in the first place! Learn how Zombie Scrum infects you, why it spreads, and how to inoculate yourself Get closer to your stakeholders, and wake up to their understanding of value Discover why Zombie teams can't learn, and what to do about it Clear away the specific obstacles to real continuous improvement Make self-managed teams real so people can behave like humans, not Zombies Zombie Scrum Survival Guide is for Scrum Masters, Scrum practitioners, Agile coaches and leaders, and everyone who wants to transform the promises of Scrum into reality. Register your book for convenient access to downloads, updates, and/or corrections as they become available. See inside book for details.
Production and manufacturing management since the 1980s has absorbed in rapid succession several new production management concepts: manufacturing strategy, focused factory, just-in-time manufacturing, concurrent engineering, total quality management, supply chain management, flexible manufacturing systems, lean production, mass customization, and more. With the increasing globalization of manufacturing, the field will continue to expand. This encyclopedia's audience includes anyone concerned with manufacturing techniques, methods, and manufacturing decisions.
