Wisdom of Teams (European version) - Creating the High Performance Organisation

by Jon R. Katzenbach

The definitive classic on high-performance teams

The Wisdom of Teams is the definitive work on how to create high-performance teams in any organization. Having sold nearly a half million copies and been translated into more than fifteen languages, the authors’ clarion call that teams should be the basic unit of organization for most businesses has permanently shaped the way companies reach the highest levels of performance.

Using engaging case studies and testimonials from both successful and failed teams—ranging from Fortune 500 companies to the U.S. Army to high school sports—the authors explain the dynamics of teams both in great detail and with a broad view. Their conclusions and prescriptions span the familiar to the counterintuitive:

• Commitment to performance goals and common purpose is more important to team success than team building.
• Opportunities for teams exist in all parts of the organization.
• Real teams are the most successful spearheads of change at all levels.
• Working in teams naturally integrates performance and learning.
• Team “endings” can be as important to manage as team “beginnings.”

Wisdom lies in recognizing a team’s unique potential to deliver results and in understanding its many benefits—development of individual members, team accomplishments, and stronger companywide performance. Katzenbach and Smith’s comprehensive classic is the essential guide to unlocking the potential of teams in your organization.

Genres: Business, Leadership, Management, Nonfiction, Buisness, Psychology, Reference

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

Reviews

[Toe · Rating 1 out of 5]

Slogging through this crap was one of the more unpleasant reading experiences I've had. The only thing worse than a terrible topic for a book is a terrible topic poorly executed. The topic: teams and teamwork. The execution: nothing more than extremely general, common sense points, sometimes listed. I learned literally nothing worthwhile. One can envision middle and upper managers thinking this book will inspire their underlings to come together as great teams and perform well at the tasks assigned them. Fools.

The last time I encountered a more formidable collection of banalities, Barack Obama was giving a speech. Even the vignettes about successful teams the authors provide us, like the one about the Burlington Northern intermodal team transitioning away from some railroad transportation regulations or Enron's Deal-to-Steel task force, are so broad in description as to be useless. For example, "Everyone on the team held each other mutually accountable."

The authors fail to realize that successful teams are great precisely because they are not self-consciously so. If there is a task that needs completion or an obstacle to be surmounted, great teams focus always on that task or obstacle, not on the fact of being a team. Being a team arises naturally almost as an afterthought. If you have to tell the team to "do real work," as the authors suggest, I suggest the problems with your team run pretty deep.

Katzenbach's and Smith's attempt to analyze team dynamics is tedious, indescribably boring, and utterly useless. Providing examples is the best way to illustrate just how awful this book is. It's like the business world equivalent of John Gray's "Men, Women, and Relationships." Here is a flavor of some of Katzenbach's and Smith's wisdom:

Random sentence 1: "When teams are deployed in the right places and against the right challenges, they have a significant impact on enterprise performance over time."

Random sentence 2: "Dealing with these pressures and capitalizing on exploding opportunities will require leaders to become much more discriminating in identifying team opportunities and integrating the naturally conflicting disciplines of team and single-leader approaches."

Random sentence 3: "When this happens, of course, the team at the top helps generate the performance focus and enthusiasm so critical to building an energized work force focused on productivity and learning as well as skill-based sources of competitive advantage."

(Dear God, just look at random sentence 3! This has all the hallmarks of B.S. corporate-speak. Look at all those trite, meaningless phrases in one sentence: "the team at the top," "generate performance focus," "energized work force," "focused on productivity," "skill-based," "competitive advantage." Kill me. At a meaty 300+ pages, there's lots more where this came from.)

If you were to read this book, which you shouldn't, here's what you'd learn:

A team is a "small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable."

There are five points on the team performance curve:
1. Working groups
2. Pseudo-teams
3. Potential teams
4. Real teams
5. High performance teams

There are six essentials of good team leadership:
1. Keep the purpose, goals, and approach relevant and meaningful
2. Build commitment and confidence
3. Strengthen the mix and level of skills
4. Manage relationships with outsiders including obstacles
5. Create opportunities for others
6. Do real work

To get teams unstuck from ruts:
1. Revisit the basics
2. Go for small wins
3. Inject new information and approaches
4. Use facilitators or training
5. Change team membership, including the leader

Path to high performance:
1. Carve out team assignments that tackle specific issues
2. Assign work to subsets of the team
3. Determine team membership based on skill, not position
4. Require all members do equal amounts of real work
5. Break down the hierarchical patterns of interaction
6. Set and follow rules of behavior similar to those used by other teams

Six characteristics of a high performing organization:
1. Balanced performance results
2. Clear, challenging aspirations
3. Committed and focused leadership
4. An energized work force dedicated to productivity and learning
5. Skills-based approach to competitive advantage
6. Open communications and knowledgeable management

The world is overflowing with interesting ideas and people. Don't waste your time here.

[Sallie Dunn · Rating 2 out of 5]

More required work reading! Blah, blah, blah

[Denis Vasilev · Rating 1 out of 5]

Консалтерская абракадабра на тему командной работы. Набор благих пожеланий на основе выдуманной интерпретации примеров.

[Borna Safai · Rating 3 out of 5]

What is it that makes teams strong? According to Katzenbach and Smith, it's an emphasis on performance. That's the essence of the book in a nutshell.

So why should you read it? The Wisdom of Teams shares a number of stories and experiences from companies of different scale, and how they managed to progress through the different stages of groups and teams to become high-performing teams. Overall, the main point that is being made is that groups don't become high-performing on their own, and especially not if the focus is solely on the group becoming a better group. When clear performance goals and challenges are given to a group, that is when individuals can take the step up and form real teams.

It feels like the book could've been shorter. Although there are a number of suggestions and recommendations on what to do and how to form teams, and some really good lists, I think there's just too much text and not enough benefit from reading it all. Focus on setting performance goals, and you can help groups turn into teams.

[Daniel Bensen · Rating 3 out of 5]

how teams make themselves (or fail to).

I went in expecting something as useful as insightful as Good to Great, or as human as The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, but we never got there. The lessons ended at "succeed as a group against high odds," which is fine, but what about failure? What about people who don't fit? I wish they'd dug deeper.

[Mandy Siefker · Rating 2 out of 5]

Outdated. I would recommend The Advantage or check out Google’s work on Project Aristotle instead.

[Aaron Mikulsky · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first read this book over 20 years ago and just re-read it. There are timeless lessons here despite it being published in 1993. Here are some quotes and highlights:

“A team is a small group of people (typically fewer than 20) with complementary skills committed to a common purpose and set specific performance goals. Its members are committed to working with each other to achieve the team’s purpose and hold each other fully and jointly accountable for the team’s results.” Exceptional teams become deeply dedicated to each other, they look out for each other’s welfare, and genuinely enjoy each other’s company.

“Cultivating a few real teams is one of the best ways of upgrading the overall performance ethic of an organization.”

The disciplined application of “team basics” is often overlooked. Team basics include size, purpose, goals, skills, approach, and accountability. “The most critical factor in the development of a high-performance team lies in the initial selection of its members.”

In high-performance teams, the role of the team leader is less important and more difficult to identify. Team leaders are distinguished by their attitude and what they do not do. Companies with strong performance standards seem to spawn more “real teams.” High-performance teams are extremely rare. Teams are the best way to integrate across structural boundaries and to both design and energize core processes. Teams naturally integrate performance and learning. The book discusses the “learning organization“ and how to balance short-term performance emphasis with long-term institution building.

“Real teams are much more likely to flourish if leaders aim their sights on performance results that balance the needs of customers, employees, and shareholders. Clarity of purpose and goals have tremendous power in our ever more change-driven world. Most people understand that job security depends on customer satisfaction and financial performance, and are willing to be measured and rewarded accordingly. What is perhaps less well appreciated, but equally true, is how the opportunity to meet clearly stated customer and financial needs enriches jobs and leads to personal growth.”

“Groups become teams through disciplined action. They shape a common purpose, agree on performance goals, define a common working approach, develop high levels of complementary skills, and hold themselves mutually accountable for results. They never stop doing any of these things.”

Like most people, companies recognize and respond more readily to threat-based major change. Help create the sense of urgency needed for change. Behavioral change occurs more readily in the team context. Teams are not as threatened by change as are individuals left to fend for themselves.

The team’s near-term performance goals must always relate directly to its overall purpose. A common, meaningful purpose sets the tone and aspiration. Specific performance goals are an integral part of the purpose. It’s about the continuing integration of purpose and performance goals.

When people do real work together toward a common objective, trust and commitment follow. Accountability, then, provides a useful litmus test of the quality of a team’s purpose and approach. There is also a strong personal commitment to one another’s growth and success.

“Behind high-performance teams lies a story of commitment. Like any real team, a high-performance team must have a small number of people with the required skills, purpose, goals, approach, and accountability described in our working definition. What sets apart high-performance teams, however, is the degree of commitment, particularly how deeply committed the members are to one another. Such commitments go well beyond civility and teamwork. Each genuinely helps the other to achieve both personal and professional goals. Furthermore, such commitments extend beyond company activities and even beyond the life of the team itself.”

“Real teams do not emerge unless the individuals on them take risks involving conflict, trust, interdependence, and hard work. For most of us such trust and interdependence do not come easily; it must be earned and demonstrated repeatedly.”

Conflict, like trust and interdependence, is also a necessary part of becoming a real team. Engaging in constructive conflict is necessary to move forward and innovate.

Each team must find its own path to its own unique performance challenge.

The common approach to building team performance is worth the read.

“The essence of a team leader's job is striking the right balance between providing guidance and giving up control, between making tough decisions and letting others make them, and between doing difficult things alone and letting others learn how to do them. Just as too much command will stifle the capability, initiative, and creativity of the team, so will too little guidance, direction, and discipline.” “The key to the leader's evolving role always lies in understanding what the team needs and does not need from the leader to help it perform. The team leader is the ultimate utility infielder or substitute player; he or she must be there to deliver only as needed.”

The six things necessary to good team leadership is timeless.

Chinese philosopher Lao-Tzo is quoted as saying, “As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence. The next best, the people honor and praise. The next, the people fear; and the next, the people hate. When the best leader’s work is done, the people say, ‘We did it ourselves.’”

The book states, “Vital characteristics necessary for high performance in the 1990s and beyond: visionary leadership, empowered work forces, dedication to customers, total quality, continuous improvement and innovation, supplier partnering, strategic alliances, skill- and time-based competition.”

“Top managers must consider teams in balance with strategy, individual assignments, hierarchy and structure, and basic management support and cross-cutting workflow processes.” “Effective top managers will increasingly worry about both performance and the teams that will help deliver it.”

Open communication and knowledge management is critical for future success. In information era organizations, “there are no guards, only guides.”

Future organization designs will seek structures simpler and more flexible, organizing work and behavior around processes instead of functions or tasks, and will emphasize teams as the key performance unit of a company.

[Carl Harrison Greene · Rating 4 out of 5]

it's easy to see why this book has such a legacy of impact.

it is a little drawn out, and isn't the most entertaining book on this topic - but much of what the authors talk about would later be simplified by the 'Agile Manifesto' that has guided modern teams since 2001.

the book is worth reading - but for those with limited attention span I might recommend a summarized edition.

[Purshia Gambles · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a first for me, being a book about team leadership and team functions and team possibilities that was not ministry-focused. Really thought provoking and complex in some parts, but more than anything if mass media believe in the power and potential of a high efficiency team structure. Plus it made me want to be a better team player for real for real.

[Kurt Steiner · Rating 1 out of 5]

Terrible. Boring with no insights or research really. Do not purchase this book.

[Timothy Darling · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you need to work in teams, this is a good book for you to read. The authors focus strongly on task as the single most important factor of team function and formation. They insist that building a team while focusing on the team itself is a big mistake. Rather the team should focus on the purpose for which they were assembled, each having a significant contribution to make to the goal. Focusing on team building and interpersonal dynamics are merely distractions.

The authors build a case for their curve that maps the functionality of working groups, potential teams, real teams all the way through high performance teams. As much as they say high performance teams are rare, I found people who read the book automatically think this is a goal and the only complimentary description for a team. In other words, as with the word team itself, once a better nomenclature that can bolster reputation, serve as an encourager, or fuel propaganda is created, it becomes the term of choice for describing what you like. This is unfortunate because the exceptional is no longer acknowledged.

Read Wisdom if you are part of a team or are considering building one. Also read it to find out where a team might be going wrong and some good suggestions to fix the problem.

[Jeff Lampson]

This book is a classic and grew my appetite for reading their follow up books The discipline of teams and Teams at the Top. Their definitions for teams is incredibly helpful and identifies very clear team structure, behavior and attributes:
-Small number of people
-Complementary Skills
-Committed to a common purpose
-Performance Goals
-Collaborative Approach
-Mutually Accountable

They provide the richest and most candid discussion of the unique issues of Executive Team and whether or not they should actually be dealt with as if they are teams or simply a group.

The FAQ guide at the end of the book is an excellent job aid type resource.

[Gerard Chiva · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book contains important wisdom about team performance in organizations, however it is written in an old style like a novel. After reading it, I'm quite sure they could have written it in 1/3 of the size and would be much more readable and pedagogic.

This book would improve by reducing storytelling and examples, adding summaries at the end of each chapter and some charts, tables and bullet points.

Although, it is poorly written, I still recommend it to coaches, team leaders and managers.

[Alejandro Teruel · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book made quite an impact when it was published in 1993 and became, for a time, a classic obligatory introduction to teams.

Rereading it in 2023 and after years of working in groups and some effective teams, as well as introducing students to agile teams, I found it disappointing -in spite of the undisputed importance of teams- it comes across more in the style of an introduction to yet another managerial fad.

It distinguishes between teamwork and teams. Teamwork requires “...listening and constructively, responding to points of view expressed by others, giving others the benefit of the doubt, providing support to those who need it, and recognizing the interests and achievements of others”. Teamwork is important, but according to the authors falls far short of turning a group of collaborating people into a team. The book introduces a decent definition of what constitutes a team:

A team is a small group of people (typically fewer than twenty) with complementary skills committed to a common purpose and set of performance goals. Its members are committed to working with each other to achieve the team's purpose and hold each other fully and jointly accountable for the team's results.

The authors believe that the most important key to successful teams are clear, demanding, realistic and measurable performance goals and mutual accountability. The book is somewhat dated on its tunnel-vision insistence on performance as the primary objective and motivation to create teams, on its definition of balanced performance as relating primarily to financial performance and customer satisfaction, and on narrowingly taking into account only customers, employees and shareholders, ignoring other possible stakeholders, even though in a case study on a Motorola team they mention the key importance of their suppliers. It also ignores the importance of adhering to ethical values, thus Katzenbach and Smith's approach could equally apply to criminal or unethical organizations. So it is not surprising that one of their key examples is a team from Enron, a company that the authors speak highly of for having developed a “Vision and values” program but whose fraudulent accounting fraud and unethical behavior probably started as early as 1992 -though I have to admit this judgement is probably unfair since the unethical behavior only became clearly visible in 2000, and the team chosen as an example had, I believe, nothing to do with Enron's mismanagement. Ethical values tangentially appear in the case of Hewlett-Packard when the authors quote an HP executive as expressing that the company had “an almost religious interest in achieving legitimate operating earnings” and:

...it was not just the financial performance standards that motivated this team. It also found real meaning in the medical products business[...] Lew Platt [said]: “You get involved in electronics, and do good at the same time.”

but they fail to pick up on the importance of ethical values.

The authors' managerial biases at the time come across quite strongly in assertions such as

Managers deal with routine change: raising prices, handling disgruntled customers, dealing with stubborn unions, replacing people, and even shifting strategic priorities.

They do make an important distinction between teams who recommend things (biggest challenge is making handoff to those that must implement their findings), teams who make or do things (often need to develop new skills for managing themselves), and teams who run or manage things (address hierarchical obstacles and turf issues), but I would have liked the authors to provide more analysis of the differences between these kinds of teams.

Katzenbach and Smith spend a great deal of effort on evaluating whether, when and how the members of the top exective suite should try to become a team. They firmly believe that top management needs “to build structural and support systens that focus on performance challenges, measurement and skills necessary to broad-based team performance at the front lines” yet the book tends to skip “teamwork” issues, recommending top management to focus on performance goals -they believe that once proper performance goals are bought into by team members, teams “magically” pop up -although they do admit in chapter 12, that the members may sometimes require training in team problem-solving, decision-making, interpersonal and leadership skills. In spite of an almost cursory caveat, team fall into place because:

Yes, there are important counterintuitive lessons about teams. But the vast majority of executives can rely upon their common sense and current skills to make teams work.

I beg to differ.

In short, while the more managerially inclined reader may profitably spend some time perusing this repetitive book, there are far better books to go to for more up to date and concrete recommendations to encourage both technical and managerial team development.

[Luci · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a good book for anyone at any level in an organization who wants to understand what makes the difference between groups of people that perform “teamwork” and the high-performing teams we might strive to emulate. The authors predict that teams will be key building blocks in successful organizations “of the future” -- and since this book was written in the 1990s, the future is now. Katzenbach and Smith argue that the key differentiators between what they call “real teams” and other superficially similar groups are clearly defined performance challenges and the commitment of every member of the team to both individual and team success.

"For a real team to form, there must be a team purpose that is distinctive and specific to the small group, and that requires its members to roll up their sleeves and work together to accomplish something beyond individual end-products." (Chapter Twelve)

The book is extremely clear that assigning groups of people to work together and telling them to call themselves a “team” has no bearing on whether they will actually perform as a real team. Likewise, company cultures that promote collaboration often result in good “teamwork” -- when coworkers have a positive working bond and communicate well about their individual efforts -- but not necessarily in the formation of these high-performing teams which exceed expectations for their success and work capacity.

“Real teams” are distinguished from “working groups,” which bring together individuals who are individually responsible for their tasks, because in real teams all members share responsibility for achieving the team goals, and work products are produced jointly by two or more members of the team rather than by individuals. The authors also introduce the terms “pseudo-teams” and “potential teams” to describe groups which are not trying to achieve collective performance and those which are trying but not yet succeeding.

This book was originally published in the 1990s and I felt the style and pacing somewhat showed that. I experienced the book as dense, slightly meandering, and slow to read, and I wondered whether that was perhaps a factor of the time in which it was written. Maybe my attention span and my expectations for the written word are different than that of the original audience.

The authors do acknowledge right at the start in their “what to expect” section that some of the material is common sense. They also highlight a number of “uncommon sense” findings from their research, including the rarity of high-performance teams and the connections between hierarchy, learning, and performance.

I think the most useful insight I took away from this book was the importance of challenging performance standards in sparking the creation of high-performance teams. The first step is establishing both urgency and direction. The anecdotes shared from the many teams and organizations interviewed for this book echoed my own experiences, in that every exceptional team I can think of in my own life was facing some significant difficulty or wicked problem. Perhaps the formation of a strong team requires a crucible.

I’m glad to have read this book and I’ll probably put it on my shelf alongside Daniel Pink’s "Drive" and Kouzes and Posner’s "Encouraging the Heart", to refer to when I’m thinking about how to inspire collective performance within an organization.

[Andrei ILchenko · Rating 4 out of 5]

The main premises of this book are:
* that a large number of group formations that call themselves teams are working groups (where individual contributions and individual accountability dominates collective work-products and mutual accountability)
* that a real team can only form through joint work and achieving results together (delegating and then engaging in discuss and decide sessions will never forge a real team) -- i.e. real teams always thrive on performance
* that even though a working group setup might be good enough for many settings, especially teams at the top of modern corporations, real or high performing teams are invariably more powerful than individuals and working groups. For executive boards, which frequently are organized as working groups, a prospect of a major change is a good trigger to start working as a real team

The book was written in 1993 before the advent of agile development methodologies such as Scrum and Kanban, which all put teams that make or do things at the center. The authors were quite prescient to highlight the importance of many of the tenets of agile back in the early 90s: small sizes, complementary cross functional skills, clear common purpose and performance goals, individual and mutual accountability for results.

What I found the most valuable in the book is the advice on how to succeed in becoming a real team for groups of people at any level in an organization including those at the top. I also like the team performance curve concept consisting of the following stages: working group -> pseudo team -> potential team -> real team -> high-performing team. It's akin to Tuckman's stages of group development: forming -> storming -> norming -> performing that many an agile coach has promulgated, yet goes deeper in elucidating what it takes to become a real team and that sometimes staying at the working group level might be best. An effective working group is more performing than a pseudo team or a potential team.

On top of it the book feature a useful explanation of some teams-related definitions:
* Teams that run things: groups of people at the top of the enterprise down to the strategic business unit (SBU) and divisional levels. Such groups have no clear end dates.
* Teams that recommend things: task forces, project groups, and audit groups that are asked to study and solve particular problems. Such teams have predetermined completion dates.
* Teams that make or do things. Such teams typically come to mind and are the cornerstone of today's Agile practices.

I've given the book a 4 star rating mostly due to:
1. Its rather drawn-out presentation style: some propositions are elucidated five or more times. It's also the reason it took me a few years to finish the book because I put it aside twice and then convinced myself to resume reading it a year or so later, which I don't regret.
2. The changes that have happened since the book was written -- thanks to the widespread adoption of Agile, it's the norm nowadays for people at or near the front lines who are responsible for making or producing things to organize themselves in teams. A new edition of the book reflecting this would be very welcome.
All in all I have learnt a lot of useful information by reading this book and highly recommend it to anyone in a leadership position.

[David Maywald · Rating 4 out of 5]

Published by Harvard Business Review Press in 1993, from McKinsey & Company. Their definition of a team is:

“A team is a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable.”

The authors have distilled learnings about teams, teamwork, and other organisational forms from almost fifty practical examples. They look at the precise distinctions between teams and working groups, accepting that many executives operate as working groups (without collective work-products).

There is a strong connection made between teams achieving superior performance, and performance goals being needed to create real teams. The performance aspect of teams is inherent and incredibly important. A group of people is far from being a team merely by being part of the same section of an organisational structure, or working together, or sharing the same space.

The focus of this book is largely for-profit and corporate teams in the United States. However, there are many timeless lessons (along with wisdom to be gained from the case studies). I would recommend this book for managers, executives, board members, and other leaders.

[Dana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Highly recommended book about how to achieve a high level of performance in any field or endeavor.

The author refutes the notion of talent and the idea that we are born with abilities and predispositions that allow to to excel in some areas (math, music, sports, etc) relative to others. The thesis of the book is essentially to prove the saying that "perfect practice makes perfect" and he builds on Malcolm Gladwell's idea in "Outliers" that you need 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert at anything. Colvin says you need 10,000 hours of perfect practice.

This book was a good mixture of anecdotes, common sense and scientific studies. The author would likely have a problem with some gospel principles like spiritual gifts and patriarchal blessings.

I listened to this book while running and on the bus over the course of three or four days and recommend it to anyone with an interest in the subject.

[Christoph Kappel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think this one is tough to rate and I am kind of between three and four stars. Generally I really like the idea to explain theory and give some examples from the real life - here with and from real teams and some of the challenges they've faced.

The theory and the actual conclusion are usually great, to the point and most of the time I absolutely agree. I just usually miss the point where the team really faces the problem from chapter though.

[Jacob Bond · Rating 1 out of 5]

- Too old to be mainly relevant in 2020.
- Acknowledges but does not persuasively rebuts arguments for team work against individualism.
- Reads like a text book.
- Not blatantly pragmatic.
- Handful of political undertones near the end that were seemingly supportive of socialism/communism/etc. Weird.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

While the research and examples are sound, no new information really comes to light in this book concerning teams. Among all of the positive team examples and why these teams were or are successful only one failed example is provided and rehashed many times. Worth the read for the positive examples if nothing elae.

[Brittany Neish · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a book I read for grad school that I both enjoyed and many times didn’t fully agree with (although isn’t that one of the lovely things about this life? We don’t have to agree with everything we read). An interesting take on team dynamics and what create, sustains and can possibly destroy high performing teams. A read I will return to as a reference in my organizational development work!

[Dimitri · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book brings insight into the difference between working groups and teams. You then realize that most teams are actual working groups, with individual work, not building together on collective work that leverages different strengths.

[Alex Kondrashin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Невыносимо скучная, но совершенно незаменимая книга.

[Matthew · Rating 1 out of 5]

Read something else. Anything else. Hopefully, you don’t have a finishing complex, because this book is a struggle. See “toe’s” review for best summary.

[Stephen · Rating 5 out of 5]

READ DEC 2020

Good overview of the difference between "work groups" and "work teams" as well as the difference between "team values" and teams. Katzenback and Smith also do an effective job of describing the rationale for creating work teams--do it for sake performance not for the sake of teams.

[Eustis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Opened my eyes to the stages of teams. Great read for me at an early point in my career.

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

While the examples speak of the Era when the book was written the practices demonstrated still ring true.

[Taylor V. Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Compelling read and a great argument for the potential power of real teams. Good mixture of prescriptive insights and interesting case studies.

[Elizabeth]

As seen in The Effective Manager.