Customer Reviews

Organizing Genius: The Secrets of Creative Collaboration

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

It never ceases to astonish me how little substance there is to most business books: they tend to take a few ideas, puff them up with facts and stories, and then paste them together into a book when a single article - or indeed the flap of the book - would more than suffice. Alas, though Bennis is a brilliant man and great expert on leadership, his book fails on many counts.

First, throughtout the text, the ideas are not that well delineated. So you get lots of stories that are often intersting and fun, but you wonder why all the details are included. Second, I didn't see what the book really adds: sure leaders can be both remarkable and difficult; sure, some teams are extraordinary; sure, we could use more great teams. But how do you do it? THe book doesn't provide much on that as a practical guide (its third failing).

Nonetheless, I thought this book was very well written, which is almost certainly Bierderman's contribution. ALso, it is fun to read the stories on their own. Finally, the sumup chapter has useful ideas (and frankly, it - just 15 pages - is all that you would need to read if you don't find the stories inherently interesting).

Tepidly recommended.

This is an informative book on leadership qualities and insights by Warren Bennis, who is a distinguished professor of business administration at USC, and who has also advised at least four presidents. Bennis discusses four organizations that were able to combine incredibly gifted people in such a synergy as to create hitherto unknown super-accomplishments: Walt Disney Studios with the first full-length animated film, Xerox and Apple with the first user friendly computer, Lockheed's Skunkworks with the first US jet fighter, and the Manhattan Project which yeilded the atomic bomb. What were the key ingredients to their success? What did they do wrong, but succeeded in spite of such matters? These questions are entertainingly answered in this book.
Among the fifteeen traits listed are: always having an enemy, seeing themselves as the underdogs, isolating themselves from unnecessary outside interferences, and hiring people that have both great ability and a talent for collaboration.
Interesting and Useful - Five Stars

First of all, it seems unlikely to me that there are too many people left that don't recognize the importance of multidisciplinary teamwork in pursuing truly important, breakthrough work.

However, even though the notion is fairly widespread it would STILL be useful to have a guide to implementing such a strategy in one's own organization. Unfortunately, Bennis and Biederman blew a good chance to do this and I was extremely disappointed by their book.

The book creates a very misleading approach to collaborative teams by concentrating exclusively on the sort of "work all night until you drop dead because nothing in the world means as much to you as this project" sort of mindset. Frankly, I don't want people like that anywhere near me. But having led and participated in many successful multidisciplinary design teams I can frankly attest that this kind of mindset is not only totally superfluous - it is also ultimately destructive.

Yes, you can have a life AND be on a successful collaborative team. You don't have to be an eccentric nut and/or a workaholic. Too bad the authors created such a misleading representation of what promises to be a very important approach to work in the next century.

This absorbing work explores the marriage between able leadership and the organization of gifted people that, combined, produces extraordinary results. The authors examine seven such groups including the Skunk Works, the Manhattan Project, Disney Feature Animation Unit, and President Clinton's 1992 campaign team. The book concludes with fifteen lessons of great groups. Extensive notes are provided.

The authors clearly reveal the complex SYNERGY between leadership and organization that creates high-performance teams, but one has to also consider the influence environmental circumstances-threats and opportunities. Abounds with excellent insights. Reviewed by Gerry Stern, founder, HR consultant.com InfoCenter and Stern & Associates.

The book falls short of delivering the promise of "The Secrets of Creative Collaboration". There are a number of current examples of groups which have achieved varying levels of greatness either within their areas of expertise or impacting the region or country they support, including within the military which the authors discounted. The book is poorly connected, disjointed to this reader. To include the clinton campaign and Carville at the expense of better examples only enforced the perception throughout most of the book that to lead a great group, one must (usually) be an insensitive bully, willing to inflict whatever degrading words or actions which spring to mind to move the group forward. There are far too many other books available to the novice as well as experienced manager which describe traits and actions of group leaders and group dynamics.

Like in many business books the authors present their message in a number of examples, each describing how a group managed to do something clearly outstanding. The problem of the book is that the authors do not manage to come up with anything like a coherent framework to explain the success of these groups. Examples are only useful if they show the working of some underlying general principle. In this book, however, examples simply stand for themselves. The stories are nicely written and it is fun to read, but it certainly does not present a theory of successful teams. But maybe, as an academic economist, I am too demanding in this respect.

Warren Bennis and Patricia Ward Biederman describe the qualities that generate "Great Groups," capable of meaningful creative collaborations. Despite the myth of individual achievement and heroic leadership, the authors delve into major breakthroughs accomplished by group effort. Often Great Groups unite around the vision of a charismatic leader and work toward that leader's goal with obsessive commitment. Bennis and Biederman spend much of the book describing the workings of a half dozen such groups - from the Manhattan project to the founders of the Disney Studio to Bill Clinton's campaign team. These case histories read like individual short stories, but they each tell the saga of a driven creative collaboration. The authors conclude with lessons you can apply to bring the dedication of Great Groups to bear within your organization. We recommend this clearly written, logically organized book to leaders and collaborators in any industry, with two caveats. First, acquiring the requisite charisma is up to you. And, second, as to the authors' fulsome praise of obsessive work habits, well, that's so `90s.

If you were to look up the word "leadership" in any reputable dictionary, it would probably suggest that you contact Warren Bennis. No one has written more and more enlightening commentary on the subject of leadership than has he. In Organizing Genius: The Secrets of Creative Collaboration, he and Patricia Ward Biederman examine a number of what the authors call "Great Groups." Perhaps the most important point is introduced in the first chapter: "None of us is as smart as all of us."

That is to say, the "Great Man" theory is invalidated by the achievements of truly creative teams such as those at the Disney studios which produced so many animation classics; at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) which developed the first personal computer; at Apple Computer which then took it to market; in the so-called "War Room" which helped to elect Bill Clinton President in 1992; at the so-called "Skunk Works" where so many of Lockheed's greatest designs were formulated; at Black Mountain College which "wasn't simply a place where creative collaboration took place. It was about creative collaboration"; and at Los Alamos (NM) and the University of Chicago where the Manhattan Project eventually produced a new weapon called "the Gadget."

Bennis and Biederman conclude Organizing Genius by providing 15 "Take-Home Lessons." Each is directly relevant to any organization which aspires to accomplish what Steve Jobs once described as being "insanely great."

With all due respect to the command-and-control skills of great leaders in the past (including most of those enshrined in the "Business Hall of Fame"), such skills simply are not effective today. "None of us is as smart as all of us." A group can become "great" only if and when it possesses both genius in each member and the leadership necessary to achieve creative collaboration by those members. With rare exception, "Genius" in isolation simply cannot accomplish what "genius" in creative collaboration can.

I can understand why some people were disappointed with this book: it is missing the recipe for how to put together a genius team and guarantee creative outcomes. However, it provides interesting insights and examples of how some of these "great groups" worked effectively together. The last pages offer a summary of these insights or learnings, which are both a good reminder and also a quick study. The author shares his list of other books on the subject, and although I have only read a few, I also recommend them. For example, THE WHIZ KIDS reads like a story, but you really feel as if you are there with them taking part in building today's great companies. As a student of the creative process, we can all "do it" if we let ourselves, and stop being blocked by personal and organizational "stalls". The greatest "stall" hindering creativity is The Disbelief Stall, when new ideas, technologies, processes, ways to market, distribution channels, etc. are found and our reaction is "It will never work". Instead we need to let our minds create the ideal solutions, and then find the best ways to get there. You should also read about these "stalls", "stallbusters" and a process to succeed mightily in THE 2,000 PERCENT SOLUTION.

I got tremendous value out of this book. While I did not see or connect with all the Great Groups that Bennis used as case studies, there are powerful ideas and insights in every one of them. I have summarzied his 15 "Take Home Lessons" in a one page handout and include it in the materials for our School for Innovators and on operational Thinking Expeditions. I also got a video of "Fat Man & Little Boy" - the Manhattan Project (which is cited in the book) and have referenced it often as an example of a powerfully urgent Great Group coalesces and collabortes differently. For anyone trying to not just launch a fastforward team, but who also wants to inspire that team to greatness, this is a must read. Caution: this is not a "how to do it" book - rather it tells the story and paints the picture, and its up to the reader to take his or her own learnings and how to out of it (iontuitively).