Customer Reviews

The Performance Factor: Unlocking the Secrets of Teamwork

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book on teams is the best I have ever seen on the subject. The author retells the story of United Flight 232 throughout the book to make his points. It brings the principles to life in a very real life way. The "team wheel" and the chapters on the qualities of a high performance team are worth the price of the book alone.

This book would be of real value to anyone leading a team. It would be an especially good resource for consultants as well. Lots of graphs and diagnostic tools make the book feel like a library of resources.

On a personal note, there is a lot you can apply to any set of relationships where you are on a team. I learned a lot about being a husband and dad just reading it!

MacMillan's text helps readers see the benefits of working in a team oriented environment. The Performace Factor is nothing to write home about and doesn't really shed new light on the academic discussion of administration. If you are new to the concept, then maybe this text is for you, but if you are well read in the field, this will probably only be interesting as far as the story of the airplane crash is concerned.

Whether an organzation is doubling or downsizing, the synergy that comes from high performance teams is critical to success in a marketplace that doesn't give a lot of second chances. Pat MacMillan's The Performance Factor presents a guide to developing high performance teams and team leaders that is both profound and practical. With the right blend of principle and practice, this book is a must read for anyone who wants to understand what teamwork and leadership are all about in the real world.

Pat MacMillan is one of the top consultants in the USA to Fortune 500 businesses and non-profit organizations. In this book he gave me, for under $20, thousands of dollars of help for my own personal "team building" challenges, and those of my own consulting clients.

Unlike some business books, this one is readable and helpful at the *personal* as well as the organizational level. There is, quite simply, a truck-load of wisdom and counsel in this book.

Joe B. Webb, President
Webb & Associates

Leading teams is the hardest and most rewarding work I have done. I have led a number of large, multifunctional customer teams consisting of Marketing, Sales, Finance, Systems & Supply Chain. I have also led a number of smaller project teams related to new product introductions, acquisitions and organizational restructures. My experience has taught me that there are always two objectives when I'm working with teams - the task and achieving high performance. Time and time again, I have found that high performance teams significantly enhance the results associated with the task. The hard part is getting a group of people to perform like a high performance team. The answer is found in Pat MacMillan's latest book The Performance Factor.

MacMillan's book is a must read for anyone leading teams, or anyone aspiring to lead teams. It is simply the best resource for both conceptual framing and practical application of high performance teams. The book is centered on a high performance team model that MacMillan has been working with for years. The model is simple and intuitive, and therefore effective. The book is packed with examples and tools to improve your chance of reaching high performance results. One of the features I liked best about the book is that every chapter ends with a "bottom line" section summarizing the material and a useful application section titled "message to team leaders". As an experienced team leader, I highly recommend it!

This book offers detailed instructions on how to manage teams of people so that they will perform at a high level. Good internal summaries. Helpful real world examples. Highly recomended.

I came across this book in 2006, 5 years after its publication. Yet it is so current - the described characteristics of a high performance team help me apply immediately in a real world and global project environment. Using Flight 232 as a story line help us mentally linked to the principles and make the book an interesting read. The "Team Wheel", "Message to Team Leader", Figures and Diagrams are all very useful. Highly recommended for anyone who had or had not read "The Wisdom of Teams".

For the past 2 years, I have used Pat MacMillan's principles to impact organization's greatest assets, their people. The Performance Factor is the heart of these principles and I have watched as organizations applied them. Synergy was created, i.e. 1+1= 3,4,5. These principles work, regardless of what culture you are in, for I have taught them in North America, UK, Asia, South East Asia and Thailand. It is simply the best investment you will ever make for the success of your organization.

MacMillan has demystified what it takes to turn a group of people into a high-performance team. In recent years, much has been written on the topic of teams, and much has been done to implement team structures in organizations of all kinds. But until now, nowhere have the factors underlying effective teams and teamwork been woven together so sensibly as they have been in The Performance Factor. MacMillan's team model is elegantly simple in concept, yet significantly robust in its logic. The Performance Factor not only lays out the 6 components needed to produce high performance teams, the pieces are linked together in such way that it is simple to see how each component relates to the others. In addition, MacMillan provides many examples from the real world to show clearly the realities and challenges facing groups who choose to emotionally invest in true teamwork. The book is incredibly rich with details and practical advice, and so readable that I found myself feeling as though I was having a private conversation with the author.

MacMillan gives team leadership particular attention because leadership is such a critical part of any team's success. At the end of each chapter is a "Message to Team Leaders", words of wisdom dedicated to helping team leaders fully understand their roles and responsibilities. An aspect of the "Messages" that I found particularly noteworthy was the recurring emphasis on service to team members and team purpose, a critical behavior required of truly effective team leaders.

I suspect that most who read "The Performance Factor" will ultimately read it more than once, and that those who are really serious about wanting to promote the `exceptional' results, achievable only through truly high-performance teams, will keep the book close at hand for ready reference.

This book is one of the best I've read on teams and team leadership. MacMillan's comprehensive model breaks down the somewhat mysterious business of effective teamwork and gives an overarching framework that gets to the heart of high performance. Six components (Purpose, Roles, Leadership, Processes, Relationships, and Communication) form a wheel that turns throughout the book. Each section of the wheel is explained in detail, with plentiful anecdotes and visual aids. The author also includes sections on team principles, possible pitfalls, and the process of building a high-performance team, among others. At the end of each chapter the author addresses `the bottom line' and includes a message to team leaders, making the principles of the book practical and doable. A helpful team assessment instrument is included in an appendix. Teams have become an integral component of successful organizations, and in this book MacMillan makes high performance teamwork accessible to anyone interested in learning. Packed with wisdom and insight, it's a must-read for anyone working with others to achieve extraordinary results.