Jon R. Katzenbach

Douglas K. Smith

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.

Creating the High-Performance Organization

The Wisdom of Teams

Harvard Business Review

Erin Meyer

Adam Grant

Boris Groysberg

HBR's 10 Must Reads on Building a Great Culture (with Bonus Article How to Build a Culture of Originality by Adam Grant)

An essential guide for any small group that must deliver team performance. With the demand for project-oriented work and faster, more nimble responses, successful small-group performance is more crucial than ever. Katzenbach and Smith, authors of the international bestseller The Wisdom of Teams, have again joined forces, revealing how to implement the disciplines, frameworks, tools, and techniques required for team- and small-group performance. Combining their insights and practical strategies, they offer concepts and pragmatic, doable exercises for team leaders and team members to deliver results. Hot topics covered include: why small-group performance demands expertise at two disciplines, team level and leader level, instead of one; virtual teams; and global teams. This book combines practical exercises with cutting-edge insights, and both authors are authorities on the subject. Attend a featured author workshop at the 13th International Conference on Work Teams: Collaborating for Competitive Advantage, September 23-25, 2002, in Dallas, TX. For information, contact the Center for the Study of Work Teams at 940 565 3096 or visit them online at www.workteams.unt.edu.

A Mindbook-Workbook for Delivering Small Group Performance

The Discipline of Teams

You can change your company's culture. Organizational culture often feels like something that has a life of its own. But leaders are the stewards of a company's culture and have the power to shape and even change it. If you read nothing else on building a better organizational culture, read these 10 articles. We've combed through hundreds of Harvard Business Review articles and selected the most important ones to help you identify where your culture can be improved, communicate change, and anticipate and address implementation challenges. This book will inspire you to: See what your company culture is currently like--and what it could be Explore your company's emotional culture Gather input on what needs to be fixed or initiated Improve collaboration Foster a culture of trust Articulate the new culture's mission, values, and expectations Deal with resistance and roadblocks This collection of articles includes "The Leader's Guide to Corporate Culture," by Boris Groysberg, Jeremiah Lee, Jesse Price, and J. Yo-Jud Cheng; "Manage Your Emotional Culture," by Sigal Barsade and Olivia A. O'Neill; "The Neuroscience of Trust," by Paul J. Zak; "Creating a Purpose-Driven Organization," by Robert E. Quinn and Anjan V. Thakor; "Creating the Best Workplace on Earth," by Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones; "Cultural Change That Sticks," by Jon R. Katzenbach, Ilona Steffen, and Caroline Kronley; "How to Build a Culture of Originality," by Adam Grant; "When Culture Doesn't Translate," by Erin Meyer; "Culture Is Not the Culprit," by Jay W. Lorsch and Emily Gandhi; "Conquering a Culture of Indecision," by Ram Charan; and "Radical Change, the Quiet Way," by Debra E. Meyerson.

HBR's 10 Must Reads on Building a Great Culture (with bonus article "How to Build a Culture of Originality" by Adam Grant)

In The Discipline of Teams, Jon Katzenbach and Douglas Smith explore the often counter-intuitive features that make up high-performing teams—such as selecting team members for skill, not compatibility—and explain how managers can set specific goals to foster team development. The result is improved productivity and teams that can be counted on to deliver more than just the sum of their parts. Since 1922, Harvard Business Review has been a leading source of breakthrough ideas in management practice. The Harvard Business Review Classics series now offers you the opportunity to make these seminal pieces a part of your permanent management library. Each highly readable volume contains a groundbreaking idea that continues to shape best practices and inspire countless managers around the world.

Hbr's 10 Must Reads on Building a Great Culture

The Power of the World's Greatest Motivational Force

Why Pride Matters More Than Money

A team at McKinsey & Company set out to discover why some companies were able to change and to on to higher performance levels while most others got bogged down. Their extensive research came to a surprising conclusion: the make-or-break factor is not top management, but a new breed in the middle - real change leaders. They're middle managers and business professionals who are breaking the mould of good management with a unique combination of tough performance standards and a fresh sense of how to inspire and motivate the workforce - skills uniquely in touch with the needs of today's marketplace and company growth plans. to learn new skills and behaviours. This book tells the story of how this is taking place through the eyes of the people who made it happen - middle managers on the front lines, responsible for doing things like increasing revenues, developing new products, changing the ways customers are served, and improving financial performance. computer down by two-thirds, and redefined every aspect of manufacturing, from the workplace to the role of the supervisor; how real change leaders at General Electric Motors set the basis for increasing return on total capital from zero to over 20 per cent in three years; how UNOCAL's Los Angeles plant reduced total operating expenses by 20 per cent, while making layoffs out of bounds; how New York City Transit Authority wiped out graffiti, cut crime by 60 per cent, turned around basic operations, and began the long climb to becoming a customer-focused organization in what may be the toughest operating environment for a service business. middle managers become real change leaders and are given free rein to do real work. Instead of the stereotypical report writers and information transmitters reviled in the business press, they assume a new role: the energizing linchpin between customers, employees and senior executives.

How You Can Create Growth and High Performance at Your Company

Real Change Leaders

Argues that teams are a key factor in improving the performance of an organization, and discusses team profiles, leadership, obstacles to team performance, and other issues

Creating the High-performance Organization

Zia Khan

An all-new approach to understanding the (in)formal connections of an organization From the bestselling coauthor of the business classic The Wisdom of Teams comes an all-new exploration of the modern workplace, and how leaders and managers must embrace it for success. Katzenbach and Khan examine how two distinct factions together form the bigger picture for how organizations actually work: the more defined "formal" organization of a company-the management structure, performance metrics, and processes-and the "informal"-the culture, social networks, and ad hoc communities that spring up naturally and can accelerate or hinder how the organization works. With dynamic examples from enterprises around the world, this book takes a timeless organizational approach and creates a powerful paradigm-shifting tool set for applying it. Includes self-assessment guidelines for senior leaders, front-line managers, and individual contributors Features organizations in business, government, the nonprofit sector, and academia-including the New York City schools system, Aetna, the Marines, United Nations, Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Home Depot, Bell Canada, and the Houston Police Department Leading Outside the Lines illustrates how leaders can make the two distinct factions work together to get the best of both.

How to Mobilize the Informal Organization, Energize Your Team, and Get Better Results

Leading Outside the Lines

Publisher Fact Sheet Renowned business teams expert reveals what motivates employees to succeed.

Aligning the Hearts and Minds of Your Employees

Peak Performance

Douglas A. Smith

Teams are fast becoming a flexible and efficient way to enhance organizational performance. Yet, in the view of the authors of this work, today's business leaders consistently overlook opportunities to exploit their potential, confusing teams with teamwork or sharing. They argue that we cannot meet the challenges ahead, from total quality to customer service to innovation, without teams.

It is common knowledge that CEOs declare their direct reports as a "team at the top." Yet with a culture of individual accountability & self-reliance pervading executive suites, few management groups ever function as real teams. Now, in a natural follow-up to his bestselling The Wisdom of Teams, John Katzenbach moves his focus farther up the organizational ladder to offer practical guidelines for increasing leadership capacity at the highest executive levels. In Terms at the Top, he shows how even the strongest & most successful CEO can improve a company's performance by turning the senior executive group into a real team-without sacrificing each member's individual leadership capabilities. Teams at the Top explains how to recognize when a team effort at the management level is preferable & when a work group under single leadership will do. Then, the book shows how to develop the capability to shift into whichever mode is appropriate. With stories & examples from well-known companies including Enron, Ben & Jerry's, Champion, Citicorp, & Mobile, as well as lessons that are applicable for management groups anywhere in the organization, Teams at the Top will help companies of all sizes & in all industries maximize the full potential of their leadership.

Unleashing the Potential of Both Teams and Individual Leaders

Teams at the Top

Kathleen M. Eisenhardt

Professor of Human Resource Management Lynda Gratton

Most teams underperform. Yours can beat the odds. If you read nothing else on building better teams, read these 10 articles. We've combed through hundreds of articles in the Harvard Business Review archive and selected the most important ones to help you assemble and steer teams that get results. Leading experts such as Jon Katzenbach, Teresa Amabile, and Tamara Erickson provide the insights and advice you need to: Boost team performance through mutual accountability Motivate large, diverse groups to tackle complex projects Increase your teams' emotional intelligence Prevent decision deadlock Extract results from a bunch of touchy superstars Fight constructively with top-management colleagues

Hbr's 10 Must Reads on Teams (with Featured Article "the Discipline of Teams," by Jon R. Katzenbach and Douglas K. Smith)

Teams are fast becoming a flexible and efficient way to enhance organizational performance. This Harvard Business Review collection brings together the ideas and research from Jon Katzenbach and Douglas Smith, who argue that we cannot meet the challenges ahead, from total quality to customer service to innovation, without teams. This collection includes The Wisdom of Teams and The Discipline of Teams.

High-Performance Teams: The Katzenbach-Smith Collection (2 Books)

Tijmen Roozenboom

Besproken wordt op welke wijze binnen een bedrijf de directeur en diens kader van leiders het best kunnen samenwerken.

Teams aan de top

Explains why some of the most promising corporation changes fail and offers tips on how to inspire a workforce

The book that turns our understanding of motivation on its head . . . and shows why most companies get it wrong. There are few people with more experience and accumulated wisdom about the inner workings of business and how people can work together more effectively than Jon Katzenbach. His groundbreaking research has resulted in several important books, including The Wisdom of Teams and Real Change Leaders. Over the past several years he has turned his attention to one of the perennial questions of leaders everywhere: How do I motivate my employees? Most everyone frets about how to devise schemes that will keep the troops revved up. Conventional wisdom—or at least the practice at most companies—often centers on money as the primary motivating force. Many also rely on intimidation, which like money generally has a short-term impact. But what Katzenbach has found in his research at many organizations is that both of these practices do little to build the long-term sustainability of an organization. For that you need a powerful force that has been—until this point—understood by few managers and implemented by fewer still: pride. From the front lines to the executive suite, most people are motivated by feelings of accomplishment, approval, and camaraderie. It’s why the best employees strive well beyond performance levels that will yield them higher pay and why most true professionals relentlessly avoid retirement. Why does Southwest Airlines consistently turn in the highest levels of performance and profitability of any company in the airline business? What can the U.S. Marines teach us about individual commitment that can be used in the for-profit world? How is General Motors overcoming its history of labor-management enmity through the efforts of “pride-builders” from both the union and the management side? By drawing on what he has learned from these and many other organizations, Jon Katzenbach provides a practical program for understanding the role of pride: • Money is not the motivator most people think it is: Katzenbach shows why pay-for-performance programs by themselves result in employees who focus on self-serving behavior and skin-deep organizational commitment. • Money tends to be a short-term motivational device and works best during times of growth, but pride works in bad times as well as good. • Cultivating pride is an investment that yields high returns on workforce performance over time and is not nearly as costly as relying solely on monetary compensation and the turnover risks that accompany a “show me the money” culture. Katzenbach shares unique insights and specifics about how the best mid-level pride-builders take advantage of the world’s greatest motivational force even in environments as challenging as General Motors and Aetna. He shows how managers at every level are missing a powerful lever if they are not instilling pride as a primary force for building their organization. Also available as an eBook.

Jon R. Katzenbach

Books

Your next favorite book is out there