THE WISDOM OF TEAMS: Creating the High-Performance Organization (Jon Katzenbach & Douglas Smith)

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Teams are fast becoming a flexible and efficient way to enhance organizational performance. Yet today's business leaders consistently overlook opportunities to exploit their potential, confusing teams with teamwork or sharing. In this book, two senior McKinsey & Co. partners argue that we cannot meet the challenges ahead, from total quality to customer service to innovation, without teams. The authors 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. Among their findings: formal hierarchy is actually good for teams; successful team leaders fit no ideal profile; commitment to performance goals is more important than commitment to team-building goals; top management teams are often smaller and more difficult to sustain; and team endings can be as important to manage as team beginnings. The wisdom of teams lies in recognizing their unique potential to deliver results and in understanding their many benefits.

Contents: Acknowledgements Prologue A Note About What to Expect Part One Understanding Teams Chapter 1 Why Teams? Chapter 2 One Team: A Story of Performance Chapter 3 Team Basics: A Working Definition and Discipline Chapter 4 High-Performance Teams: Very Useful Models Part Two Becoming a Team Chapter 5 The Team Performance Curve Chapter 6 Moving up the Curve: From Individual to Team Performance Chapter 7 Team Leaders Chapter 8 Teams, Obstacles, and Endings: Getting Unstuck Part Three Exploiting the Potential Chapter 9 Teams and Performance: The Reinforcing Cycle Chapter 10 Teams and Major Change: An Inevitable Combination Chapter 11 Teams at the Top: A Difficult Choice Chapter 12 Top Management's Role: Leading to the High-Performance Organization Epilogue A Call to Action Appendix Teams Researched for Book Selected Readings Index