Creating Teams with an Edge (Harvard Business Essentials) [Paperback]

Harvard Business School Press (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 31, 2004 | ISBN-10: 159139290X | ISBN-13: 978-1591392903

Teams can be a driving force for organizational performance--and managers can play a key role in teams' ultimate success or failure. Highlighting the latest research on team development and dynamics--and including hands-on tools for improving communication, resolving conflicts, promoting interdependence, and more--this guide helps managers at all levels to motivate teams to achieve higher performance.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Since 1984, Harvard Business School Press has been dedicated to publishing the most contemporary management thinking, written by authors and practitioners who are leading the way. Whether readers are seeking big-picture strategic thinking or tactical problem solving, advice in managing global corporations or for developing personal careers, HBS Press helps fuel the fire of innovative thought. HBS Press has earned a reputation as the springboard of thought for both established and emerging business leaders.

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press (March 31, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 159139290X
• ISBN-13: 978-1591392903
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #500,883 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Art and Science of Effective Teamwork, July 9, 2005

By 

Robert Morris (Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Creating Teams with an Edge (Harvard Business Essentials) (Paperback)

This is one of the volumes in the new Harvard Business Essentials Series. Each offers authoritative answers to the most important questions concerning its specific subject. The material in this book is drawn from a variety of sources which include the Harvard Business School Press and the Harvard Business Review as well as Harvard ManageMentor®, an online service. I strongly recommend the official Harvard Business Essentials Web site (www.elearning.hbsp.org/businesstools) which offers free interactive versions of tools, checklists, and worksheets cited in this book and other books in the Essentials series. Each volume is indeed "a highly practical resource for readers with all levels of experience." And each is by intent and in execution solution-oriented. Although I think those who have only recently embarked on a business career will derive the greatest benefit, the material is well-worth a periodic review by senior-level executives.

Credit Richard Luecke with pulling together a wealth of information and counsel from various sources. He is also the author of several other books in the Essentials series. In this instance, he was assisted by a subject advisor, Jeff Polzer, who is an associate professor of organizational behavior at Harvard Business School. Together, they have carefully organized the material as follows.

Team Concepts: Understand These First
Essentials for an Effective Team: The Foundations of Success
Forming the Team: The Crew and Its Charter
Getting Off on the Right Foot: Important First Steps
Team Management Challenges: Where Leaders [and Leadership] Matter
Operating as a Team: Putting Ideas [and Insights] to Work
The Virtual Team: A Collaborative Challenge
Becoming a Team Player: Your Most Important Assignment

Please note the sequence of subjects addressed. Luecke and Polzer offer a step-by-step process which is cohesive, comprehensive, and cost-effective. Throughout their narrative, they provide an abundance of observations, suggestions, caveats, strategies, tactics, and checklists which really do comprise "the complete skill set to build powerful and influential teams." Then in the three appendices, they provide useful implementation tools, a guide to effective coaching, and a "Troubleshooting Guide" because any human enterprise -- especially one which requires effective cooperation, collaboration, and communication -- is certain to encounter all manner of problems, especially when those initiatives challenge what Jim O'Toole has characterized as "the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom."

This volume will be most valuable to decision-makers in those organizations (regardless of size or nature) which are either planning to respond to opportunities as well as problems by creating "a team with an edge," or, are now thinking about doing so. I know of no other single volume which can be of greater assistance to those decision-makers, whatever their current circumstances may be. That said, it would be foolish to depend entirely on a single source for guidance, albeit one as insightful and practical as this one is. Rigorous, sometimes painful soul-searching must first be completed. In a perfect world, everyone in a given organization cooperates, collaborates, and communicates effectively. In reality, that is true of very few organizations. For all others, a team can be created and then generously supported whose mission is to solve a given problem or exploit an opportunity but one which, in process, also demonstrates HOW to complete any other mission with effective cooperation, collaboration, and communication.

Those who share my high regard for this volume are urged to check out all other volumes in Harvard Business Essentials Series as well as O'Toole's Leading Change, Evan I. Schwartz's Juice: The Creative Fuel That Drives World-Class Inventors, Jon R. Katzenbach and Douglas K. Smith's The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-Performance Organization, Warren Bennis and Patricia Ward Biederman's Organizing Genius: The Secrets of Creative Collaboration, Dorothy A. Leonard, Walter C. Swap's When Sparks Fly: Harnessing the Power of Group Creativity, Gary Harpst's Six Disciplines for Excellence, Carla O'Dell's If Only We Knew What We Know: The Transfer of Internal Knowledge and Best Practice, and Jason Jennings' Think Big, Act Small: How America's Best Performing Companies Keep the Start-up Spirit Alive.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A solid book about Teams, December 13, 2004

By 

[e-mail] (Ottawa, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Creating Teams with an Edge (Harvard Business Essentials) (Paperback)

I enjoyed this book about teams, it provided very good overal information on all of the different stages teams go through from start to finish. The book also included things that must be done, and things to avoid.

This book will prepare the reader well to tackle challenging tasks with their teams. It will help determine what should be done individually, as a work group or as a team. Something I have personally experienced myself that they covered really well is the need to define the projet well as you assemble your teams, and also to define measures of success, roles, communcations methods and decision rules to be used by the team leader - Team leaders will find it very useful.

Also a small section on vitual teams working together remotely which I think could have been more extensive, but still covered all of the needs of a virtual team, including the need to meet face to face at the start of the project to build the teamwork and cooperation spirit of the team.

What I did not like? The main thing is that the book looked at teams mostly from the point of view of a large organization. Not much talk about small teams operating from small to medium enterprises, and how smaller and more flexible teams can also bring great benefits.

Comments and your feel about this book? email me to discuss.

Thanks

A very good book on teams overall.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The basics of team-based work, December 10, 2007

By 

Rolf Dobelli "getAbstract" (Switzerland) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Creating Teams with an Edge (Harvard Business Essentials) (Paperback)

This helpful guide from the Harvard Business Essentials Series will put you on the right track, whether you have just been assigned to a team or are considering forming a team to tackle a project. The writing is clear and concise, the advice is solid and the business principles are spot on. If you seek a guide about how to put a team together, get a project underway and manage it to fruition, you would be hard pressed to find better fundamental information in so few pages. We recommend this book to all aspiring team leaders, team members and managers.