Customer Reviews

Why Teams Don't Work: What Went Wrong and How to Make It Right

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If you're going to read this book, be prepared. This is not a book of sports metaphors. This is not a ritualistic hosanna to the glory of teams. This is not "rah, rah, sis-boom-boaster, teams are the best thing since the wide-slot toaster."

In fact, Why Teams Don't Work is that rarest of beasts: a book of truths. Using language that is remarkably entertaining, honest, and brief, Robbins and Finley dissect the hackneyed assumptions about teams to explain why so many companies that switched to teams "have not been experiencing the organizational bliss they counted on." A simple matrix of fourteen team problems, symptoms, and solutions - one of the blessedly few diagrams in the book - sets the tone. Teams don't work because they're made up of people: people who don't communicate, people who are uncertain, people who lack feedback and tools, people who are (surprise!) reluctant to jump on a live grenade to save the team.

A recipe for pessimism? Not at all. The authors' antidote to "happy talk" team books emphasizes common sense recommendations.

* "Form teams only when they make sense."

* "Adapt your style to suit the needs of whoever you're communicating with."

* Since there are at least six ways to make a team decision, "the important thing is that the team decide, in advance, what decision making method will be used."

* "The more goals and objectives a team is handed, the worse their performance will be. If a task doesn't appear on the high priority, short-term goals/objectives list, the hell with it."

These may not sound like epiphanies, but they are ultimately more practical than rhapsodic cheerleading or abstruse four-box models. Robbins and Finley believe in teams because they do produce results - if you can avoid the pitfalls.

Why Teams Don't Work can be inconsistent. In their rejection of algorithms and hard-and-fast rules, the authors sometimes substitute pithy ideas and aphorisms for diagnostic tools or practical solutions. Nor do they offer revolutionary research that sets aside past thinkers; the book is peppered with quotations from the likes of Peter Senge, Wm. Edwards Deming, and B. W. "Forming-Storming-Norming-Performing" Tuckman. Nonetheless, Why Teams Don't Work makes for terrific reading: clear, realistic, and genuinely amusing. If you believe in magic and mantras and the panacea of teams, read something else. If you want to find the truth and enjoy yourself at the same time, read Why Teams Don't Work.

"Why Teams Don't Work" is a book that actually promotes using teams (to my disappointed) and explains common failure points when implementing teams in organizations. That was my first disappointed... I was looking forward to reading a truly anti-team book, but no, it's in fact just a popular and simplistic team book.

My second disappointment came when they started define what a team is. Team literature is full of definitions of teams. Commonly they include having shared accountability or have a performance goal. What do the authors of teams don't work say: "A group of people working together." I found this definition simplistic. Then, the authors links the usage of teams directly to the quality revolution from Japan and calls that the origin of teams. They seem to have done absolutely no research on the use of teams before they wrote this book and are missing the socialtechnical systems and the use of teams in P&G, which all happened before people were worried about competing with Japan.

The whole book basically continues like this. It's written extremely popularistic . It's badly researched and the points it makes are trivial. I do not think this book provided anything new over other team material. If you are interested in why teams are a fad... don't read this book. I would not know what book to read, but this book simply promoted teams. If, on the other hand, you are interested in a good book on teams. I'd recommend to look at "Wisdom of Teams" from Katzenbach or, probably even better, "Leading teams" by Richard Hackman.

Leave this book where you found it... in the book store.