Customer Reviews

Teamwork Makes The Dreamwork

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This little book states well the mechanics of teambuilding and teamworkmanship, and I enjoyed reading it. In the end it shows that these mechanics can be summarized into ten distinct steps: (1) deciding on the importance of having a team; (2) assemblying a competent team; (3) doing what it takes to develop the team; (4) working like a team; (5) delegating power, responsibility to the team; (6) giving, not taking, credit for the success of the team; (7) collecting and sharing the returns from investment in the team's efforts; (8) divesting from underperforming team members; (9) opening and expanding opportunities for team growth; and (10) giving the team the reason, resources, and the chance to succeed.

In terms of depth and gusto this is not Maxwell at his best (I have read a few of his books), but the message of the book is clear even so. It is the notion that often cooperation enhances the collective comparative advantage of the team, making group specialization more productive than individual factor specialization. I have no evidence of my own against that, and I feel comfortable to agree, even if only for now. There is a lot to like about this book. Team leaders of both for-profit and not-for-profit organizations would benefit from reading this book.

H.V. Amavilah, Author
Modeling Income Determinants in Embedded Economies : Cross-section Applications to UU Native American Economies
ISBN 1600210465

I loved this book. Its a quick read. And it makes the point very quickly: Teams succeed, individuals don't! The glorified individuals we often hear of (steve jobs, bill gates, etc) are actually "leaders" leading successful teams. (Not that we don't know these things, but the book makes things obvious, very nicely.)

This book gives succinct recipes for building successful teams.

Read it. You will learn how to build a successful team in less than 1 hour.

Many of us owe much to the writings of John C. Maxwell. This volume is representative of his work as there's a lot of substance in this small book. Maxwell has the gift of presenting age-old truths in a unique way. As suggested by the title this book develops the theme of building and sustaining a team as a means of goal attainment. He gives advice on how to tap and maintain synergy between team members. In the early part of the book he makes the point that we are all involved in various teams just by the nature of our lives. A marriage, work unit, church or any other social system consisting of more than one individual is a team. Consequently he argues that the principles in this book have the potential for widespread use. As expected it is packed with quotes and illustrations from achievers, a large number of whom are sports figures. This is an easy, enjoyable read.

The book is a compiliation of famous quotes, some short stories about influential people and Mr. Maxwell's contributons, where he uses catchy acronyms to imply some kind of motivational message to the reader.

This has all been done to death, and there is nothing memorable or noteworthy that you haven't either heard somewhere else or read before. The book is surrounded by colorful pictures and splashy graphics, but as far as literary content is concerned it is positively average, at best.

I am Apostolic Pentecostal, and I am probably sure that John C. Maxwell is not but that is besides the point. Each year for a 'New Years Resolution' type thing, our church has a saying or some sort of Quote. The 2011 one was "Teamwork Makes the DreamWork!" Ecclesiastes 4:9 says "Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour." My Pastor got the inspiration from this book and also talked about the story of Tenzing Norgay in our first service of the new year. This book was floating around the church for the longest time for different people and ministers to read and the Pastor's wife even used it in her Snday School for the teens. I wanted to read this book very much but didn't know who evended up with it. I finally broke down and bought it. I was glad I did. I was reading it one day on the way to church and my ride well his wife asked me what I was reading and told her about it being at church so she read some of it on the way to church and she is going to order one for herself. :) This book is excellent and would highly reccomend it.

I love John Maxwell, and this Kindle version of Teamwork Makes the Dream Work is an example of why. Advice on working together, illustrations, motivation, and examples help make this fairly short read beneficial for those working with others, whether in business or in church types of settings. Maxwell does a wonderful job of teaching the reader as to the benefits of working together. While it is short, it is still informative and to the point. I will use the illustrations in this book over and over again not only in my life, but in those I have the blessing of teaching.

The Keystone Kid

Teamwork Makes the Dream Work contains some great stories and a ton of pithy quotes, but they come across as rather disconnected and anecdotal. It's higher on inspiration than on information. I'm a Maxwell fan, and typically enjoy his style and insights.

It's not that the material is bad, but the book's description and some of the other reviews here led me to expect a lot more meat on the hard work involved in choosing, building, developing, empowering, and leading a team to do something significant. After reading the book I found it gave very little concrete information on any of this - spending far more time pitching the need for teams. Even scanning through it quickly a second time I had a hard time coming up with a concrete takeaway idea to put into practice.

If you can get it here at a bargain price (as I was able to) it's not a bad read, but just don't expect too much.

This is a great book as are most of the books by the author. I enjoy his writting style and the great information and how positive he is in all he rights.

A little while ago, I bought the E-book version of this for my kindle for something like $2.99. I'm sure the Maxwell content in it is good, but the formating makes it terribly difficult to read. All of the text is centered with a bunch of extra spaces between lines.

I've tried to see if its a problem with my kindle, but every other ebook I have on it displays correctly. Don't buy the kindle version of this book.

I give this book four stars. It was exciting and I was always on the edge of my seat. The book I read was Teetoncey, written by Theodore Taylor.
Young Ben O'Neal finds a girl on the banks of North Carolina. Mrs. O'Neal decides to take her in. Ben needs to learn to live with this young girl they call Teetoncey. Teetoncey does not talk and has lost her memory. In chapter 8, a doctor comes to check her and says, "Shock of one kind or another. It can be temporary or permanent. If she has brain damage, fare the' well. She'll be a vegetable. Better you ought to have left her in the surf...". Eleven chapters are left to solve this mystery.
I think this book falls under the mystery/adventure category. Figuring out who Teetoncey is, is considered the mystery in this story. Just who is this young girl?! I liked this book because you never knew what was going to happen next.
Theodore Taylor is from North Carolina. I think that is why he could describe the settings so well. The illustrations by Richard Cuffari also helped set the mysterious tone of the book.
I think this book is great for 10-13 year olds. This book won 18 Books for young people awards. I'm not surprised I liked it so much because I enjoyed another work by this author, The Cay. I definitely recommend this book!