Teams At the Top [Hardcover]

Jon R. Katzenbach (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 15, 1998

It is common knowledge that CEOs declare their direct reports as a team at the top. Yet with a culture of individual accountability and self-reliance pervading executive suites, few management groups ever function as real teams. Now, in a natural follow-up to his bestselling "The Wisdom of Teams", Jon Katzenbach offers practical guidelines for increasing leadership capacity at the highest executive levels. He shows how even the strongest and most successful CEO can improve a company's performance by turning the senior executive group into a real team - without sacrificing each member's individual leadership capabilities. "Teams at the Top" explains how to recognize when a team effort at the management level is preferable and when a work group under single leadership will do. Then, the book shows how to develop the capability to shift into whichever mode is appropriate. With stories and examples from well-known companies including Avon, Ben & Jerry's, Citicorp, and Clorox, "Teams at the Top" will help companies of all sizes and in all industries maximize the full potential of their leadership.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Using stories and diagrams, Katzenbach explains his theory of recognizing when a team effort at the top (executive management level) is preferable and when a working group under single leadership is more appropriate. An integrated balance of real teams, individuals, and single-leader groups is possible and desirable among top executives; one mode of behavior is not intrinsically better than the rest. The best leaders are able to constantly reshape their top executives into and out of team mode as appropriate, varying the top team's composition, behavior patterns, and leadership approach to maximize opportunities, depending upon the challenges and issues at hand. The author advises discipline to energize rather than stifle initiative and performance among top executives; the alignment of behaviors and decisions of people throughout the organization; and the balancing of the various elements of the organization for optimum results. We learn that while top executives of organizations rarely function as a team, such teams have the most potential for immediate results and yet are most often neglected. Mary Whaley

Review

"A good book... worth reading." -- Training & Development, July 1998

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 238 pages
• Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press; 1 edition (January 15, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0875847897
• ISBN-13: 978-0875847894
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #642,611 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Jon R. Katzenbach is a Senior Partner with Booz & Company where he launched and now leads the Katzenbach Center at Booz. The Center is focused on taking innovative ideas in organization beyond best practice. With over 45 years of consulting experience, Jon is a recognized expert in organizational performance, collaboration, corporate governance, culture change and employee motivation. Prior to joining Booz & Company, Jon was a Founder of Katzenbach Partners LLC, a firm specializing in organization, leadership, governance and strategy. Before founding Katzenbach Partners LLC, Jon was a Director with McKinsey.

Jon has personally done work for George and John Paul Getty (Founder of Getty Oil), Edgar Kaiser (CEO of Kaiser Industries), John Reed (CEO of CitiGroup), David Rockefeller (Chairman and Chief Executive of Chase Manhattan Bank), Jack Rowe (CEO of Aetna), Larry Spitzer (CEO of Memorex), Charles Williamson (CEO at Unocal) and others.

Jon has authored several articles and books, including Why Pride Matters More Than Money, Peak Performance, Teams at the Top, Real Change Leaders, The Myth of the Top Management Team, and Firing Up the Front Line. He also co-authored (with Douglas Smith) The Discipline of Teams and the bestseller The Wisdom of Teams. Jon and Zia Khan's new book, Leading Outside the Lines, discusses how leading enterprises can accelerate behavior change and performance by mobilizing the informal elements of their organization to complement the formal.

Jon attended Brigham Young University and graduated with distinction from Stanford University in 1954 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics. He obtained his MBA from Harvard University in 1959 where he was a Baker Scholar. Jon also served in the Navy during the Korean War as a Lt (jg) in the Pacific on the USS Whetstone (LSD 27) and on the USS Nicholas (DDE 449).

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Delicate but Essential Balance, April 11, 2001

By 

Robert Morris (Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Teams At the Top (Hardcover)

In one of his several brilliant studies of leadership, Organizing Genius, Warren Bennis examines high-performance teams such as those associated with the Disney studios (which created the first full-length animation film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs), the Manhattan Project, Xerox's PARC, and Lockheed's "Skunk Works." But if your own organization has few (if any) geniuses, what are the best strategies for unleashing the potential of both collaborative teamwork and individual leadership? Katzenbach is himself the author or co-author of a number of brilliantly conceived and executed studies, notably The Wisdom of Teams and Real Change Leaders. In this book, his central thesis is that "an integrated balance of real team, individual, and single-leader working group performance is both possible and desirable at the top -- not that one mode is intrinsically better than the other." The key phrase is "integrated balance." Whatever the size and nature of your organization, Katzenbach offers "three major messages":

1. The best senior leadership groups are rarely a true team at the top -- although they can and do function as real teams when major, unexpected events prompt that behavior.

2. Most of the team members can optimize their performance as a group by consciously working to obtain a better balance between their team and non-team efforts -- rather than by trying to become an ongoing single team.

3. The secret to better balance lies in learning to integrate the discipline required for team performance with the discipline of executive (single-leader) behavior -- not in replacing one with the other.

This third "message" is especially relevant to smaller companies, probably privately-owned, in which the CEO (the archetypical single-leader) is either the founder or related to the founder. In such companies, the need for an "integrated balance" may be even greater than it is for much larger organizations. Katzenbach organizes his material within nine chapters. Rather than list their titles, I have selected a few key passages which, hopefully, will suggest the potential value of this book to you and your own organization's specific needs and interests.

Executive Leadership Discipline requires an individual to "create and maintain urgency, resolve the critical strategic issues, enforce individual accountability, leverage executive time, make the tough decisions individually, pick the best individuals for the key jobs, and periodically raise the bar." (Chapter One)

"The notion of `leadership capacity' implies a system of leadership, if you will, that can extract leadership wisdom, insight, and behaviors from many more individuals. [This is obviously essential to concensus-building.] Thus it fuels the continuing search for different kinds of leadership approaches, both individual and joint, at all levels of the organization." (Chapter Three)

Team Leadership Discipline requires members to "create a meaningful purpose, commit to a team performance goals, be mutually accountable (no member can fail... only the team fails), commit to real work, share decision among members, strive for the right skill mix, and establish the height of the bar." (Chapter Four)

"Integrating real team performance with executive leadership performance requires both a sharp understanding of the differences between the two two disciplines required and a relentless determination to integrate the two. It is hard work, counterintuitive, and outside the comfort zone of most senior executives. Nevertheless, it is well worth the effort." (Chapter Nine)

In Appendix B, Katzenbach offers this definition of a real team: "A small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable." My own opinion is that unless an organization has the two disciplines (both executive leadership and team leadership) in appropriate balance, it will probably have neither. Hopefully, this brief commentary will encourage you to read and then re-read this important book. Also, to check out the other books authored or co-authored by Katzenbach.

2.0 out of 5 stars Mediocrity for our times, December 30, 2011

By 

Enoch 327 (Magnolia, TX United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Teams At the Top (Hardcover)

The author uses Enron as an example of what can happen if his strategies are implemented. Need I say more?

1.0 out of 5 stars Command and Control at the Top, October 16, 2011

By 

David Gerard, Ph.D. - See all my reviews

This review is from: Teams At the Top (Hardcover)

Like many others, I picked up this book hoping to get a kernel or two of wisdom on how to consult to those at the top of the leadership pyramid. What I got was disappointing, to say the least. At minimum, this book is mistitled, because the reader is led to expect a comprehensive description about how executive teams function and create the same kind of magic we find with teams elsewhere in the organization. Instead, we are treated to page after page of exhortation, warning against a) calling an executive team a "real team"; b) encouraging CEOs to create "real" executive "teams" and c) permitting "undisciplined" teamwork at the top, lest senior executives suddenly drink the kumbya-flavored Kool-Aid of too much collaborative behavior. There is little of value in this lightly-referenced and illogically-written tome. This is not the book to take on a long plane trip as your only reading, unless you are a big fan of command and control leadership styles.