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

Rating:
Summary: A breath of fresh air on a stale topic.
Review: 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.