I have read so many books on what makes great teams tick. Teaming: How Organizations Learn, Innovate, and Compete in the Knowledge Economy by Amy C. Edmondson is definitely one of the top books on this subject that you should reach out to as a Compassionate Leader.
Amy C. Edmondson has worked for many years as a Professor at Harvard Business School and has done over 20 years of research on teams across different environments, in bigger companies and in smaller ones.
In Teaming, Amy provides a lot of examples on how to build and sustain teams in various industries. This is a really practical resource. It’s filled with ideas and strategies for all types and sciences of organisations.
Yet the real power of this work is that it provides a supportive framework for understanding and responding to the dynamics of teams, and, specifically, how to use that dynamic in creating collective learning.
This framework approach is structured into three parts. The first part answers basic questions about what ‘teaming’ is. What is it all about? How does it work? As it is not something that we are taught at school, what does it take for people to learn how to team? And what does it look like when people do team together? It also looks at how teaming produces organisational learning.
The second part of the book looks at four leadership actions that enable teaming and learning, which go hand-in-hand. This section provides a real close up look at how people work together in a wide variety of organisations. So, the first is learning to team, then it shifts towards teaming to learn. The same way as in school we’re first learning to read and then reading to learn, so is it the same thing with teams. This thinking is so profound that it forms part of the foundation of our work with our clients at Team Dynamics.
The last part of the book shows how to practically implement teaming in an organisation. What I really like about this, is that she has three different leadership case studies in each environment, with different types of teaming and problem solving, and the results out of those experiences.
So, it really is for me a book that any organisation can use to learn how to remain competitive, as I believe that these days the only way to stay competitive is by creating a different organisational landscape through teams.
To find out more information about this book, visit Amazon HERE, or even better, order your copy at your local bookstore.
Most people recognize that the knowledge-based, twenty-first-century organization depends on cross-disciplinary collaboration, flattened hierarchies, and continuous innovation. One reason for this is that expertise has narrowed and many fields have splintered into subfields. Unfortunately, the problems that need solving in the world haven’t narrowed accordingly. Instead, they’ve just become more complex. This means that many challenges must be approached by people working together across disciplines.
Ann’s Favourite Quote From Teaming, by Amy C. Edmondson