Customer Reviews

Leading Teams: Setting the Stage for Great Performances

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Teamwork is more popular as a buzzword than as a practice when it comes to the actual experiences of team members in many organizations. In this engaging, well-structured, and practical book, Richard Hackman addresses this puzzling gap between theory and practice. Teams should have a richer pool of talent and experience, greater resources, and more flexibility than an individual. Yet a painfully large proportion of teams function poorly, often underperforming the same work done by individuals. Drawing on years of research and observation of teams ranging from music ensembles to airline crews to hockey teams, Hackman illuminates the dark corners of teamwork. Anyone working in a team or leading a team will benefit from reading his book. The author's engaging style comes as a significant bonus.

Teams go awry because leaders have focused on the wrong things (such as leadership style) when designing, managing, and supporting teams. Hackman explains why team effectiveness is best measured by the three criteria of a team product acceptable to clients, growth in team capability, and a group experience that is meaningful and satisfying for its members. Team members and leaders alike will benefit from fully appreciating the five conditions that Hackman has found to foster work team effectiveness: having a real team, a compelling direction, an enabling team structure, a supportive organizational context, and expert team coaching - the first three of which are the core conditions.

Contrary to "cause-effect" models of team leadership in which all the emphasis is placed on leadership behaviors and styles, in Hackman's view the central role of leaders is to create and maintain these five conditions. Leaders should not attempt to continually manage a team to *push* it to perform well. They will do better to establish a clear purpose and then make small adjustments at the right times. Consistent with this approach, Hackman warns against the pervasive tendency to assign credit or blame to specific individuals. Taking that perspective blinds those trying to "fix" or improve team performance to dynamics only evident at a group level of analysis.

Commendably, Hackman does *not* present his findings as a *universal* model for teams. His Authority Matrix (p.52) sets out four levels of team self-management. He does not address "manager-led teams" which have the lowest level of self-management since they are invariably disastrous for well-understood reasons. Nor does he look in depth at self-governing groups which take on all four levels of setting overall direction, designing the team and its organizational context, monitoring and managing work process and progress, and executing the team task. Hackman's model revolves around the most heavily populated middle categories of self-managing and self-designing teams.

Don't mistake this group level of analysis for any kind of fuzziness. You will find the book outstanding in the author's ability to combine compelling narrative with a finely-carved explanatory structure. The first condition of having a "real team" may appear fuzzy, but only until you read chapter 2 in which Hackman analyzes real work teams into four components, each with its own subtleties. As you read the examples and reflect on your own experiences participating in or observing teams, you will see how commonly teams fail to have a real team task (rather than being merely a "co-acting group"), to suffer from being "underbounded" or "overbounded", or to lack clearly delimited authority or inadequate stability over time. On the last element of real teams, Hackman strongly disputes the notion that long-lasting teams tend to deteriorate in performance. The only except appears to be research and development teams who becoming uniquely stale after about three years of stable membership.

Despite pushing back against over-managing teams, Hackman finds a crucial role for leadership in setting a compelling direction - the second core element of effective teams. Even here, direction must be carefully limited to ends rather than means. In the very worst teams, a leader sets highly specific means but leaves the purpose completely unspecified. Hackman's example of such a team at a bank will make some of us wince in painful remembrance. This understates the subtleties of Hackman's account, which unfolds in his discussion of the trade-offs involved in setting direction for a team.

If this were an infomercial rather than a review, I would say "And there's more! Much more!" The last section of the book examines imperatives for leaders, including 7 execution skills of team leaders, and how to think differently about teams - the obstacles to improving teams, what it takes, and what it costs those who would attempt the task. If you prefer to test drive some of Hackman's ideas, you might first read his articles "The Five Keys to Successful Teams" (which covers some of the material in the last two chapters), and "New Rules for Team Building". You may want to abandon such caution however. Unlike so many books where 80 percent of the text acts as filler, adding little if anything to the initial points, every one of Hackman's chapters will yield an excellent returning on your reading investment.

Leading teams is the best book on the topic of teams that I've read so far. It's very well structured, well researched, well written and full of useful information that can be used in real life to improve teams.

The book consists of three parts of which part II is the main content of the book. Part I is called "challenge" and starts with an comparison of two different airline companies who have different strategies of improving service quality. One using self-directed team and one using more strict processes and procedures. It explains the advantages and disadvantages of the team approach and puts the challenge to how we can create an environment in which a productive team can work. Hackman then proposes five enabling conditions for getting team to work:

1. A real team
2. Compelling direction
3. Enabling structure
4. Supportive context
5. Expert coaching

Each of these are clarified in the five main chapters.

A real team is defined at having four features: a team task, clear boundaries, defined authority and some stability in members. Each of these is clarified and backed up with very interesting research data.

A compelling direction, a clear goal needs to be set for the team. This energizes the team. The chapter on compelling team has some very interesting material on fixing the process or fixing the goal.

Enabling structure builds also on earlier work done by Richard Hackman and talks about structuring the team and structuring the task that the team needs to do. When both of these are structured then they will enable the team and create a possibility of a really well working, highly productive team.

In supportive context, the rest of the organizational context is discussed. This includes the rewarding system (something I didn't always agreed with the author, though he makes very valid points!), the learning system and the technical supporting system.

In the last of the five points, he more or less focuses on the team leader role. The team leaders role as a coach of the team. He earlier states that the team leader role is certainly overrated, though it still is important. He describes how a team leader can coach the team.

Part III is the closing part of the book. It summarizes some of the earlier conclusions. It consists of one chapter that makes recommendations for moving forward with team in the organization. Then the last chapter the author the author discusses common obstacles and speculates about the future of teams.

Overall, the book was an excellent read. Funny at times, well structured and excellent references. Of all the team-related books, this one stands out. One of the reasons for standing out is that its more based on research than about speculation (like many team books). A must read when you are working in or with teams.

An author who proposes a common lens through which to understand the dynamics of the Nighthawks hockey team and the conductor-less Orpheus Chamber Orchestra is pretty audacious, but Richard Hackman carries if off in this book. Solidly researched and very well written, the book presents an apparently wide range of work groups, including airline crews, musical ensembles and hockey teams, and unifies them by illustrating how they are effective (or not) as teams. What do they have in common? "Their work requires members to generate performances 'live' and in real time, often without the chance to go back and try again if things don't go well." The examples are compellingly interesting, e.g., a reader will never fly a 737 again without noticing the specific roles and choreography of the flight crew. It's a good read, far more entertaining than one would expect from a publication of Harvard Business School Press.

Even generally productive teams need to improve their productivity. I'm quite impressed by the framework provided in this book for diagnosing the quality of the direction you're providing, the way you structure your teams, and the way that people are identified with the teams and how all of these impact the team. It's interesting how much is delivered in this book without prescribing precisely how leaders should behave. As a person with a productive team whose concerns are primarily around keeping the team focused and getting more and more effective, this book was great.

The only thing I didn't like is that it sometimes felt like there was a page target they were trying to hit. The same airplane and manufacturing plant examples are repeated over and over, making it seem like there's very little data backing up this research. The same topics are also hit over and over in nearly the same way (the three areas mentioned before). However, that only hurts the presentation; the fundamental topics are quite solid.

Leading Navy Seals, NHL Stanley cup contenders or a bunch of IT guys, Hackman is the worlds authority on whats makes teams groove. For example, what the optimal size of a team. Take 5 seconds, 4, 3,2,1. Times up. Think hockey or basket ball. Isn't it 5. Large teams such as football have 11 players but the on-field defensive players are typically in a 5-4 defensive structure. Hackman compiles real research on teams from evidence based resources. He provides a complete framework that can be used to build teams. It consists of 5 elements - Who's on/Who's not on the team, a compelling direction, enabling org/team structure, supportive org and expert coaching. And that is what sets this book apart from other writers. Its not some journalist doing some compiling of articles and papers. This guy lives,eat,sleeps and breaths teams. Get it, read it.

Although at times written like a text book, this is a good book to read for anyone who leads teams. It covers all the key elements in getting great performances out of your teams. Sections on setting direction and structure are excellent. I found much of Mr. Hackman's advice to be methods I had been successfully using in my own consulting practice. Whether you're looking for addition help in getting a great performance out of your team or confirmation you've got your game in order, it's recommended reading.

This was my first book on the "science" of teams. I had originally asked a friend who is a professor of Strategy for a book on "leadership" and he suggested this instead. Reading it was a very enjoyable experience. Relating it to teams that I have worked in, had to build relationships with, get work out of, and build myself, was an amazing exercise. In the end I realised that the best "self-managing team" I have is at home! I would strongly recommend this book to everyone, whether you work in a large organization or are a housewife! It's got beautiful insights for everyone.

i needed the book really soon for a class, and it arrived just in time, in good condition.

There are some valuable lessons in this book, but combing through the wordiness and fluff is very time consuming. Of course one could argue that you need all of the anecdotal evidence to prove what he is saying and make his observations relevant. But with most of his observations being common sense to a natural leader, you wouldn't need all of the evidence.

In the end, as the author agrees, there is no perfect leader for all situations. The right balance of traits and actions will tell how good a leader was only in hindsight. There is no silver bullet that will MAKE a successful team leader.

I would have prefered a a distilled version of this book taking up about 50 pages rather than 300. The author is very intelligent and wise, but he is no Peter Drucker. I don't understand the glowing reviews of this book. It is worth a look if you have the time, but there are much better and more concise guides to effective leadership out there.