Teams Books - Page 5

Human Dynamics: A New Framework for Understanding People and Realizing the Potential in Our Organizations

Sandra Seagal, David Horne

List Price: $34.95 By: Pegasus Communications Amazon Marketplace: 46 new & used starting at $0.46

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Based upon 17 years of ongoing research involving more than 40,000 people from over 25 cultures, extensively field-tested, and adopted internationally by Fortune 500 companies, Human Dynamics? is a developmental system that demystifies the complexities of how people function and interact with one another. Human Dynamics presents a powerful framework for understanding the distinct ways in which we process information, learn, communicate, relate with one another, manifest stress, maintain well-being, and develop as human beings. At the heart of Human Dynamics are the three universal principles we all share in different capacities--mental, emotional, and physical--fundamental threads that cross culture, age, race, and gender to unify us all. As we learn to appreciate our commonalities and differences, we can use our unique gifts and apply new understanding to enrich our relationships, heighten "collective intelligence", communicate more effectively, work together more productively, enhance creativity, optimize team learning, and strengthen organizational performance. Actual accounts from major companies including Intel Corporation, Intermountain Healthcare System, and London Life Insurance Company document how Human Dynamics can optimize business relationships, organizational learning, teamwork, and communication.

Great Business Teams: Cracking the Code for Standout Performance

Howard M. Guttman

Amazon Price: $16.47 List Price: $24.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Wiley Amazon Marketplace: 58 new & used starting at $11.78

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Very insightful look at the mechanics of high-performance business teams 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I used to think that it was impossible to create a high performing business team. My thinking was guided by the old axiom that you cannot teach an old dog a new trick. This book totally changed my viewpoint by showing me not only how it can be done, but tangible proof that it works. I found this book to be insightful, practical, well-organized and extremely useful. I particularly enjoyed the discussion about "the five musts for building great organizations." This book should be required reading for all managers and executives.

Editorial Review:

Understand and decode the inner workings of great business teams with the more than 30 in-depth examples in Great Business Teams: Cracking the Code for Standout Performance. Author Howard Guttman examines and dissects teams at top-management, business-unit, and functional levels and isolates five key factors that drive team performance to offer you insight into the ways these teams achieve success. Using this book, go directly to the marketplace to scrutinize teams in a variety of industries, evaluating the challenges they face and the methods they choose to manage these challenges.

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Manga Edition: An Illustrated Leadership Fable

Patrick M. Lencioni

Amazon Price: $12.21 List Price: $17.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Wiley Amazon Marketplace: 51 new & used starting at $7.42

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Editorial Review:

The blockbuster bestseller now in a manga edition--fully illustrated and fun to read!

Beautifully illustrated by Kensuke Okabayashi, this enthralling edition of Patrick Lencioni's massive bestseller gives readers a new format in which to understand the fascinating, complex world of teams. Kathryn Petersen, Decision Tech's CEO, faces the ultimate leadership crisis: Uniting a team in such disarray that it threatens to bring down the entire company. Will she succeed? Will she be fired? Will the company fail? Lencioni's gripping tale serves as a timeless reminder that leadership requires as much courage as it does insight.

Throughout the story, Lencioni reveals the five dysfunctions that go to the heart of why teams--even the best ones--often struggle. He outlines a powerful model and actionable steps that can be used to overcome these common hurdles and build a cohesive, effective team. This is a compelling fable with a powerful, yet deceptively simple message for all those who strive to be exceptional leaders.

Kensuke Okabayashi (Jersey City, NJ) is a working illustrator, a graduate of the School of Visual Arts, and an instructor at the Educational Alliance Art School in New York City.

The Team-Building Tool Kit: Tips and Tactics for Effective Workplace Teams

Deborah Mackin, Deborah Harrington-Mackin

Amazon Price: $12.21 List Price: $17.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: AMACOM Amazon Marketplace: 57 new & used starting at $1.95

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

A MUST HAVE FOR TEAM BUILDING! 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

What an excellent guide for any company that currently has SDWT or is contemplating the idea. A must have! This book will guide you through the process, covering all topics from beginning to end. I love the completeness of the meeting management section! If you have ever sat through an unproductive, b-o-r-i-n-g meeting and desperate for productive, engaging meetings this book is for you! Although weary of teaming in the beginning, the use of the concepts in this book has increased productivity to 30%, we are all on board now! The transformation is sometimes painful and not at all easy, but in the end is worth it. Higher productivity, employee morale, product quality and employee engagement is all yours if you stick to the program! Avid business reader, this book is priceless!!

Editorial Review:

Workplace teams learn to function as effective units when they have the tools and techniques to be greater than the sum of their parts. Now thoroughly updated and expanded, "The Team-Building Tool Kit" provides practical advice to guide team coaches, leaders, and members to high-performance results. Filled with bullet points to make tips and strategies quick and easy to grasp, the book covers both the structure and nitty-gritty process details that so often derail even the best teams. Featuring new sections on team accountability, decision making, and problem solving, this team-building classic is a must-have for every team library.

Group Dynamics for Teams

Daniel Levi

Amazon Price: $51.25 List Price: $56.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Sage Publications, Inc Amazon Marketplace: 43 new & used starting at $40.70

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

“A fluidly written text . . . offers sound grounding for the team novice and further challenge to the more experienced. A significant contribution to the promotion of accomplished teams!”

-Jacqueline A. Merz, The George Washington University

“This wonderful and easy-to-read book includes current research pertaining to group and team development along with practical suggestions for enhancing team effectiveness, which is essential if organizations are to effectively compete in the 21st century.”

-Alan R. Lisk, University of Dubuque

Thoroughly updated and revised, the Second Edition of Group Dynamics for Teams provides a clear and concise overview of the basic psychological concepts of group dynamics and their application by teams in the workplace. Grounded in psychology research but with a very practical focus on organizational behavior issues, this book helps readers understand and participate in teams more effectively in day-to-day work.

New to the Second Edition:

• Presents an entirely new chapter: A new chapter (Chapter 18) on evaluating and rewarding teams concludes the book.
• Includes a new “Team Leader’s Challenge” section: Each chapter presents a brief case study with several discussion questions to better involve students with the course content.
• Provides the most up-to-date research: Updated throughout, this edition incorporates more material on the cognitive perspective of teamwork, expands the discussions of team training and of team stages, and includes a new section on team culture and climate.
• Offers more examples and activities: The number and variety of examples and hands-on activities have been increased to reinforce concepts and illuminate how teams operate in real-life settings.

(20070803)

Who Will Do What By When? How to Improve Performance, Accountability and Trust with Integrity

Tom Hanson, Birgit Zacher Hanson

Amazon Price: $11.95 List Price: $11.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Power Publications Amazon Marketplace: 8 new & used starting at $6.58

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 16 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

It Changed My Life 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This book allowed me to understand how damaging it is to not keep a promise. These things happen and when they do, the book clearly explains how to repair the damage. I was so impressed with this book that I have purchased copies for all of my employees and extras to give to special people as a gift. "Who Will Do What By When" is life changing. It very simply explains how to word requests such that everyone understands what they must do by when. This provides accountability. It is an exceptional book, easy to read and short.

Editorial Review:

Formerly a successful salesman, Jake McKay is now a failing manager. Join him as he races to learn the fundamentals of team and personal effectiveness from his coach before he loses his job –-- and the woman he loves. Along the way you’'ll arm yourself with the tools you need to cut through the daily tangled web of organizational politics and interpersonal issues that hinder performance. You'll learn to: * Use the “Integrity Tools” to boost performance, trust and personal power; * Hold others accountable without being overbearing; * Evoke sustainable, outstanding performance in teams.

Speed Lead: Faster, Simpler Ways to Manage People, Projects and Teams in Complex Companies

Kevan Hall

List Price: $29.95 By: Nicholas Brealey Publishing Amazon Marketplace: 21 new & used starting at $9.70

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Turning things on their heads 4 out of 5 stars.
3 of 4 people found this review helpful.

This week I did a speed read of Speed Lead. Sometimes it is important to turn things on their heads to see them better--it is much easier than doing handstands to get a different perspective--and this is exactly what Kevan Hall, CEO of Global Integration does. It astounds me how quickly new insights become boilerplate, that heavy stuff that keeps us grounded when we need to fly off in new directions. So it is refreshing when we are challenged by someone other than airport security about the baggage we carry with us.

Within less than a generation, concepts of teamwork, community, buy-in, and communication have become the dogma of contemporary management practice and panaceas for what ails us organizationally. The merit of Hall's essay is that he dares to ask when, how, and why these concepts are applicable and above all, when are they NOT! Hall clearly identifies when these best intended and highly valued work concepts not only do not work but cause hemorrhages of time, money and above all, motivation. In essence, he is telling us, "Take a closer look!"

The author writes in a simple and straightforward manner without excess jargon. This does not keep him from articulating significant concepts and distinctions with sound bites that give the book its power to influence our practice. Interspersed worksheets assist the reader to reflect on his or her organizational realities as the key concepts are introduced. Rather than listing the chapters, now that anyone can read a table of contents by googling up Amazon, I would like to highlight a few hotspots.

Take, for example, Hall's treatment of "community decay." This is in fact an examination of the cycle of motivation that is often unmanaged to the detriment of both projects and people. Hall tells us how to kick off a community involvement, how to sustain energies when people are working remotely, and, finally how to finish. "Unfinished business" is a psychological drain that is the bread and butter of therapists but hardly ever identified or dealt with as an energy drain in organizations.

Much of the book depends on the clear distinction between a "spaghetti team" (intense interdependency needed to achieve goals--hence many connections of each team member with each other) vs. a group or "star team" (independent efforts produce most of the results, so only central coordination is usually required). This distinction seriously affects both the functional size of the team and the amount and kind of communication that is necessary and NOT necessary.

Not all of Hall's suggestions are new, but it is the focus that he puts on them that adds value. For example, having people at a training program or meeting identify their wants and offers, i.e., what they are looking to have or to learn, and what they are willing to share or provide. My colleague and friend Walt Hopkins introduced me to this way of starting a session over 20 years ago. However, Hall's insight is that instead of having long boring presentations of what people see as their "best practices"--common in many meetings, they simple use wants and offers data to network with each other and come away what they hunger for rather than a carryout menu of seemingly good things to do.

The big middle of this book rightly deals with remote working and virtual teamwork, and rightly so. as most people I work with in large organizations confess that as much as 90% of their craft and communication are handled virtually. Here Hall goes into detail about how to trim out the unnecessary, build local capability, and manage distributed loyalties without paranoia.

A few gems from the pages of Speed Lead:
* "If there is no agenda, how do you know you need a meeting?"
* "A regular meeting is a bad meeting."
* "People are much more able and willing to adopt common practices than common values."
* "Loyalty is naturally local."

In the Cultural Detectivetm USA, my colleagues and I identified as core US values, "speed" and "speaking out." Clearly "speed" and "time is money" are the unexamined premises of Speed Lead. As Hall points out, "Values rarely change." However the exercise of values is highly relative to situations, circumstances and the Zeitgeist. Sometimes they are more ideal than real. So it is a challenge to become conscious of the shifts that occur in their relativity. For example, despite the US addiction to speed, I hear complaints from Asian managers that their US counterparts simply move too slowly! Despite the lip service paid to "speaking out" and "freedom of speech," fact is that in the US workplace "cover your backside" seems ascendant, while in the US public context "freedom of speech" is being severely limited by fear, invasion of privacy, and political correctness. Dealing with the cost of the intimidating legal and political climate in organizations as well as in the general US environment seems missing in these pages despite its growing impingement on global business.

While only the final chapter of Speed Lead is overtly about culture, the entire book is about the culture of organizations and, from the author's apparent experience as a practitioner around the world, what he speaks about is at the interface of culture and globalization. However, what starts out as practical forestry management deteriorates into clear cutting in its final moments. For a great majority of readers, I fear Hall essentially burns down the cultural rain forest with the assumption that, because what purport to be rule-oriented, individualistic, direct- and English-speaking meritocracies have succeeded in exploiting resources and marketplaces so successfully, they are de facto right or even know where they are going (other than after the next dollar). Capitalism has been good at creating a lot of wealth and very dodgy about where it comes from and where it goes.

Paradoxically the final chapter is titled, "Leave my cultural values alone," but suggests that this is done by ignoring values in favor of adopting common practices, unless the values involved turn out to be locally useful or cause trouble. This is frightening and suggests that the future of most cultures will belong to museum curators. While there may be a practical balance to be found here, this reviewer suspects that Chapter 8 will be, more often than not, understood as giving the reader all the expert permission he or she needs to ignore, if not flout the cultural values and practices of collaborators with different backgrounds or on other parts of the globe. Freedom of culture, like freedom of religion, is relegated to the ever diminishing area of private discourse as the unconscious and unexamined culture and religion of global business are given free reign. The rise of hackers and terrorists should not surprise us.

Bottom line: lots of challenging and useful ideas, many helpful applications, especially salient for virtual collaboration, but let your values give you the framework in which to achieve your Speed Lead.

Editorial Review:

Talented people in today's organizations waste an estimated 40% of their time on unnecessary cooperation, communication and control. Old-fashioned skills are too expensive and too slow to use in complex companies. Speed Lead distills the experience of more than 35,000 people in over 200 leading companies. The resulting radical view has enabled organizations to unravel the spaghetti of complexity, reduce project cycle times, and curb the costs of unnecessary travel.

Mastering Virtual Teams: Strategies, Tools, and Techniques That Succeed (Jossey Bass Business and Management Series)

Deborah L. Duarte, Nancy Tennant Snyder

Amazon Price: $40.00 List Price: $50.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Jossey-Bass Amazon Marketplace: 41 new & used starting at $29.99

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Another Human Resource Book with no Business case 3 out of 5 stars.
25 of 27 people found this review helpful.

I was disappointed by the lack of real world examples. Most of the examples were "human resource groups". Now, to be sure, there are many really fine checklists for managers included in this book. Although they are basic, most managers find them useful and thought provoking.
Unfortunately, as with most books on virtual teams, the authors have not focused on the critical operations which use virtual teaming: marketing, sales, program/project management. This book also neglects to leave the reader with a future focus --like: what is the new work and how will the businesses have to 'virtually' restructure or lose the "command and control" model of management.

Editorial Review:

This third edition of the best-selling resource Mastering Virtual Teams offers a toolkit for leaders and members of virtual teams. The revised and expanded edition includes a CD-ROM with useful resources that allow virtual teams to access and use the book's checklists, assessments, and other practical tools quickly and easily. Deborah L. Durate and Nancy Tennant Snyder include updated guidelines, strategies, and best practices for working effectively with virtual teams across time and distance to see a project through. The useful tools, exercises, and real-life examples show how anyone can master the unique dynamics of virtual team participation in an environment where the old rules no longer apply.

The Discipline of Teams: A Mindbook-Workbook for Delivering Small Group Performance

Jon R. Katzenbach, Douglas K. Smith, Doug Smith

Amazon Price: $23.10 List Price: $35.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Wiley Amazon Marketplace: 55 new & used starting at $15.05

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

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.

Corporate Lifecycles - French edition

Ichak Adizes Ph.D.

Amazon Price: $39.95 List Price: $39.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: The Adizes Institute Amazon Marketplace: 19 new & used starting at $39.94

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Why Read This Book? 5 out of 5 stars.
13 of 13 people found this review helpful.

If you are a person who desires to create change in your organization, improve profitability, manage the implementation of Strategic or Succession plans, or build a management development process, This book is for you! Most of my clients cannot put the book down as they read about their organization and how predictable companies grow and die.

I insist my clients read this book in order for me to help them build strategic or succession plans, as well as implement them. I do not have a CEO or Senior Exec, who has read the book and found it usesless or meaningless. This book helps me communicate with executives, as to what they see and experience within the company, in order for me to help them.

This is a "MUST READ" before you begin a "Change or Strategic Implementation Process." This is not a "touchy-feely" book. It is right to the point, and has good examples of each element. My favorite part is the Insultant vs Consultant discussion.

Editorial Review:

Now in paper--Adizes' fascinating work that likens corporations to living organisms. Exploring their developmental stages, Adizes focuses on normal/healthy problems that lead to growth, versus abnormal/pathological problems that, if left untreated, lead to a company's death.