For organizations that care about innovation, individual creativity isn't enough anymore -- people need to be in creative, collaborative relationships. But without the knowledge and tools for building these relationships, innovation expert Michael Schrage argues, one will not be successful in the offices of today and even less so in the "virtual" offices of tomorrow. No More Teams gives readers the tools and techniques to go beyond the lazy cliches of "teamwork" to the practical benefits of collaboration. When Schrage studied the world's greatest collaborations -- including Wozniak and Jobs, Picasso and Braque, Watson and Crick -- he found that instead of relying on charisma, they all created "shared spaces" where they could play with their ideas. By effectively using technological tools available in most workplaces -- anything from a felt tip pen and a napkin to specialized computer software - -you can literally map your discussion as it is happening, making it possible to keep all the good ideas, cope with every objection, handle conflicts as they arise, and, ultimately, master the unknown.
Are you a leader who is tired of your time, attention, and energy getting devoured by team drama? Gossip. Infighting. Complaints. Cliques. Drama is what occurs when team members aren't given the tools or support they need to rise above stress, selfishness, and disagreements. Team drama wreaks havoc on organizational health. It damages morale, productivity, engagement, and retention. Drama leads to customer complaints, lost revenue, and a talent exodus. It also sucks the life out of every manager it touches, monopolizing their time and obliterating their spirit. This is why leaders at every level, in every industry, have a duty to build team unity and prevent team drama. No More Team Drama deftly merges research in psychology, organizational development, and employee engagement with the author's practical experience training front-line leaders from all over the U.S. The result is an indispensable manual on improving the quality of interactions between employees in the workplace. Cure for the Common Leader author Joe Mull describes exactly how to transform a group of employees into a band of collaborators committed to working hard, getting along, and wowing customers. In other words: No. More. Team. Drama. -------- "Yes, yes, yes! Joe has smartly and frankly addressed behaviors that suck the energy out of so many at work, providing us all credible, doable fixes. No More Team Drama should be required for anyone serious about creating healthy company cultures!" - Suzanne Malausky, Director of Culture and Talent Management, MedExpress, an Optum Company "Using proven ideas and presented in a real-world, read-it-and-use-it format, No More Team Drama is a treasure trove of resources and expert ideas to improve employee engagement, customer experience, and co-worker connections." - Vicki Hess, Author, Shift to Professional Paradise and 6 Shortcuts to Employee Engagement "I spent 20 years leading professional baseball organizations. I can attest that this book explains simply how to develop a workforce that models the best, most successful teams in sports. Joe mixes Gladwell-like stories and research with real-world experiences, so that you learn how to develop workplace teams that get along, while getting the job done." - Skip Weisman, Author, Overcoming The 7 Deadliest Communication SINs: A New Standard for Workplace Communication
"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"--
The authors argue that the move to teams has failed because teams themselves are unaware of their own needs, conflicts, and peculiarities. This text is a handbook for team members and leaders to succeed, through recognizing what teams are really like, not what they ought to be.
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.
In the course of their 20+-year engineering careers, authors Brian Fitzpatrick and Ben Collins-Sussman have picked up a treasure trove of wisdom and anecdotes about how successful teams work together. Their conclusion? Even among people who have spent decades learning the technical side of their jobs, most haven’t really focused on the human component. Learning to collaborate is just as important to success. If you invest in the "soft skills" of your job, you can have a much greater impact for the same amount of effort. The authors share their insights on how to lead a team effectively, navigate an organization, and build a healthy relationship with the users of your software. This is valuable information from two respected software engineers whose popular series of talks—including "Working with Poisonous People"—has attracted hundreds of thousands of followers.
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.
Award-winning entrepreneur and journalist Shane Snow reveals the counterintuitive reasons why so many partnerships and groups break down--and why some break through. The best teams are more than the sum of their parts, but why does collaboration so often fail to fulfill this promise? In Dream Teams, Snow takes us on an adventure through history, neuroscience, psychology, and business, exploring what separates groups that simply get by together from those that get better together. You'll learn: * How ragtag teams--from soccer clubs to startups to gangs of pirates--beat the odds throughout history. * Why DaimlerChrysler flopped while the Wu-Tang Clan succeeded, and the surprising factor behind most failed mergers, marriages, and partnerships. * What the Wright Brothers' daily arguments can teach us about group problem solving. * Pioneering women in law enforcement, unlikely civil rights collaborators, and underdog armies that did the incredible together. * The team players behind great social movements in history, and the science of becoming open-minded. Provocative and entertaining, Dream Teams is a landmark work that will change the way we think about people, progress, and collaboration.
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.
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.
