Rating: 
Summary: Why and How to Work in Teams
Review: A good balance of case studies, step-by-step procedures, and advice for people who want or need to work in teams but are accustomed to working in organizational "stovepipes" or matrix organizations. People who have successful experience working in Integrated Product Teams and Integrated Product and Process Development (IPPD) Environment will find the principles and processes familiar. This book dates back to 1992 and reads a lot like a Harvard Business Review article, only of book length. The Department of Defense used this book as a source reference for their IPPD guide, and Integrated Product Teams have "taken off" since that time and are integral to DoD acquisition programs today. Nevertheless, this book is still worthwhile. The DoD did a thorough job of taking the "how to" information from this book and expanding on it to great detail. The mistake they made was to leave out the "why." The case studies, omitted by DoD, really put you in the middle of successful teams to the point that they will make you want to be on a team like the ones in the book. That is the missing element when converting an organization to a team-based work environment... step by step instructions are not enough. To succeed, the team members have to want to work in this difficult but rewarding manner. That is the main value of this book: it puts you in the picture and makes you want to succeed at teaming.
Rating:
Summary: Why and How to Work in Teams
Review: A good balance of case studies, step-by-step procedures, and advice for people who want or need to work in teams but are accustomed to working in organizational "stovepipes" or matrix organizations. People who have successful experience working in Integrated Product Teams and Integrated Product and Process Development (IPPD) Environment will find the principles and processes familiar. This book dates back to 1992 and reads a lot like a Harvard Business Review article, only of book length. The Department of Defense used this book as a source reference for their IPPD guide, and Integrated Product Teams have "taken off" since that time and are integral to DoD acquisition programs today. Nevertheless, this book is still worthwhile. The DoD did a thorough job of taking the "how to" information from this book and expanding on it to great detail. The mistake they made was to leave out the "why." The case studies, omitted by DoD, really put you in the middle of successful teams to the point that they will make you want to be on a team like the ones in the book. That is the missing element when converting an organization to a team-based work environment... step by step instructions are not enough. To succeed, the team members have to want to work in this difficult but rewarding manner. That is the main value of this book: it puts you in the picture and makes you want to succeed at teaming.
Rating:
Summary: Wisdom of Teams a valuable reference for all organizations
Review: A must read for organizations, both business and government wishing to utilize the strength of teams to further performance and accountability.
Rating: 
Summary: Complete waste of time
Review: I am a Masters of Human Resource Management Student at Rutgers, and I felt that the book was very practical and could be used as a great reference guide, and I suppose that for what the book was written. However the writing was so commonplace, uneventful, and repetitive I found myself skipping paragraphs, furthermore, I felt that the case studies were not good examples of the points the book was trying to make.
Rating:
Summary: Boring
Review: Jon Katzenbach and I wish to alert readers of The Wisdom of Teams that we have just published The Discipline of Teams -- a companion and sequel to Wisdom. Discipline includes exercises teams can use to learn and apply the team discipline. It also provides critical additional and new material about setting goals and virtual teaming -- that is, applying the team discipline through teamware/groupware technology such as the web, email, project management and so forth. We believe any reader of Wisdom will benefit from the new material, and expecially the exercises, in The Discipline of Teams.
Rating:
Summary: Sequel By Same Authors
Review: Jon Katzenbach and I wish to alert readers of The Wisdom of Teams that we have just published The Discipline of Teams -- a companion and sequel to Wisdom. Discipline includes exercises teams can use to learn and apply the team discipline. It also provides critical additional and new material about setting goals and virtual teaming -- that is, applying the team discipline through teamware/groupware technology such as the web, email, project management and so forth. We believe any reader of Wisdom will benefit from the new material, and expecially the exercises, in The Discipline of Teams.
Rating: 
Summary: Focus on performance, not on "being a team"
Review: Many years after the publication of our book, The Wisdom of Teams, one lesson has stood the test of time more than any other: focus on performance, not on "being a team". Great teams are teams with clear and compelling performance goals and outcomes. I have been discussing this performance focus ever since writing the book. As a result, I have also learned a lot about the difficulties small groups have in setting clear performance goals and outcomes so that they can then figure out whether and how to apply the team discipline for success. One consequence of my work over the past several years is that I have now written a new book, Make Success Measurable! that helps small groups, teams and others figure out what goals to set and how best to manage themselves and others to achieve them. In this new book, I have included dozens of exercises to help people learn and apply the needed tools and frameworks. My hope is that Make Success Measurable will become an essential companion to Wisdom of Teams, and, accodingly I strongly recommend getting and using both books.
Rating: 
Summary: Highly detailed framework for team development
Review: Overview:
The Wisdom of Teams presents Katzenbach and Smith's contention that real teams are the best approach to building a high-performance organization. The authors blended together their highly detailed framework for team development with examples of how several corporations successfully or unsuccessfully implemented these team principles. While acknowledging that teams may not be the best solution for every organization's problems, the authors unashamedly insisted that businesses do themselves a disservice by not considering the team-based approach. The book's twelve chapters are organized into three parts: Understanding Teams, Becoming a Team, and Exploiting the Potential.
Summary:
Part One, Understanding Teams, introduces the reader to the authors' thesis that teams present the best approach to creating a high-performance organization. Teams are defined as a "small group of people with complementary skills committed to a common purpose and set of specific performance goals" (21). Teams are not the same as work groups, committees, councils or task forces where the emphasis is on individual performance and accountability; that is, the sum of individual bests. Neither is every group that calls itself a team a true team. They may exhibit team-like characteristics or share team-like values, but those in and of themselves do not make a team. The distinguishing characteristic of teams is the synergistic effect created when individual accountability is exchange for mutual group accountability and shared group responsibility. Additionally, teams need to do real work in order be characterized as a real team. They must produce a specific work product that contributes to the organization's mission and success. However, achieving real team status is often difficult. In order to become successful, potential teams must overcome bureaucratic inertia, managerial biases, confusion about what makes a true team, negative past experiences with pseudo teams, fear of failure, and individual resistance to shared accountability. These embody a daunting array of factors to overcome, but the authors insisted that a top-level commitment to team-based solutions could lead to building a successful team.
In Part Two, Becoming a Team, the authors used their "team performance curve" to graphically illustrate the process necessary to create winning teams. A group does not become a team when initially formed. They may be a working group committed to better coordinating individual efforts toward individual goals benefiting the company, but they produce no joint work product. While this may be the best solution to a company's problem, the decision to become a team requires the conscious decision to assume the risk of mutual accountability and joint responsibility. If provided the right catalyst, a working group can transition to either a pseudo team or a potential team. The pseudo team fails to implement the basics of team building. They call themselves a team but are still focused on individual performance and not group results. Potential teams show an enhanced desire to formulate a group mission but have not adopted mutual accountability. They demonstrate improved team effectiveness, but their impact on the corporate problem is no greater than the working group. Real teams have a clearly defined mission for which they hold themselves mutually accountable and produce a joint work product. High performance teams are real teams that develop a deep personal commitment among the members of the team for one another's personal growth and wellbeing. These teams are both highly effective in their team effort and produce high quality results for the organization. However, to rise to that level, team members must make the critical choice to invest themselves in the team and its mission while overcoming obstacles that threaten to cause the team to regress to one of its lesser effective counterparts. Successful teams need quality leaders who help focus the group on the mission, endorse a team-based philosophy of shared accountability, and foster a climate of courage and success.
In Part Three, the authors forcefully championed their assertion that teams are the building blocks of successful organizations. Teams, they insisted, are the best organizational tool to deliver the results necessary to build customer loyalty, shareholder value, and employee satisfaction. Provided a company has a strong performance ethic and vision-driven leadership, teams can contribute the necessary skills, energy, and performance values that drive successful businesses. The ultimate decision to incorporate functional team rests with executive leadership and its willingness to transform bloated hierarchical structures, managerial parochialism, and individual-based incentives.
Review and Reaction:
Brevity and succinctness are not the strengths of this book. Once one is able to navigate the business techno babble, the mind numbing repetitiousness, and awkward sentence structures, the authors' point becomes clear: Teams are good for business. The genuine strength of the book is in the examples. The authors' ethereally academic presentation of team concepts finds a clearer voice in their reflections on how these concepts were applied in "real world" corporate environments. While not every example speaks with equal adequacy to its point, the reader can gain an understanding of what factors help build or break teams. Many of these factors, as the authors' asserted, are common sense.
Rating:
Summary: Boring
Review: The message: real teams are good. The authors rave about all the great things a well functioning team can accomplish and give several examples.The authors set out to figure out what makes a real team and how people that put these together do it. It is a worthwhile purpose. The problem is that the "insights" revealed are old and rather useless. For example, the authors found that teams that had clearly stated goals performed better than teams that had not agreed on common goals. If this is news to you, you should buy the book. 1 star out of 5
Rating:
Summary: Good book, solid content
Review: This book does not present any real "revolutionary" ideas that will blow you away with originality, what it does do is lay out the things that make teamwork work. Since so much in business nowadays requires teamwork, the book has a valuable and timely message. Recommended.
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