The Secret of Teams: What Great Teams Know and Do

by Mark Miller, Kenneth H. Blanchard (Foreword)

Teams are critical to the success of every organization. Departmental, interdepartmental, cross-functional, ad hoc, task-specific—teams do everything from planning the office party to setting the annual budget to establishing performance goals.

But what separates the teams that really deliver from the ones that simply spin their wheels? What is the secret of high-performance teams?

As he did in The Secret, Mark Miller uses a compelling business fable to reveal profound yet easily grasped truths that can dramatically transform any organization. Debbie Brewster, the heroine of The Secret, has been promoted and is now struggling with taking her new team to the next level. Her old mentor, Jeff Brown, the company’s CEO, sends her out to find the secret of teams. On her journey she learns from three very different teams—the Special Forces, NASCAR, and a local restaurant.

Debbie and her team discover the three elements that all successful teams have in common. But that’s just the beginning. The devil is in the details, as the story of Debbie’s efforts to actually implement the three elements shows. You’ll learn how to change entrenched ways of thinking and acting, what you have to do to optimize each of the three elements of a successful team, how to measure your progress, and more.

Creating high-performance teams does more than just give your organization a competitive advantage. It can be a performance multiplier that significantly improves results while honoring and developing people. It may be the ultimate win-win-win that your organization is seeking.
 

Genres: Leadership, Business, Nonfiction, Management, Professional Development, Audiobook, Self Help

144 pages, Hardcover

First published September 9, 2011

About the author

My career at Chick-fil-A began over forty years ago as an hourly team member in one of the local restaurants. Shortly thereafter, I became the sixteenth corporate employee — my first job: working in the warehouse. Since that day, I have worked all across the business from starting our Corporate Communications group and our Quality & Customer Satisfaction Team to leading in Restaurant Operations, Training & Development, Leadership Development and more!

For the last twenty years, I have focused much of my time on serving leaders, helping them grow themselves, their teams, and their organizations. In addition to my role at Chick-fil-A, I’ve also had the privilege to teach and lead in not-for-profit organizations domestically and globally. Although the context is different in every organization, the problems have common roots and so do the solutions.

Along the way, I have been fortunate to author (and co-author) a few books – eight and counting. Today, more than a million books are in print in 25+ languages. My approach to writing has always been to find what is true in principle and figure out how to make it applicable to the real world.

Reviews

[Bill Pence · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mark Miller has worked at Chick fil-A in various capacities since 1977. He has written a number of books, all of which I’ve read and benefitted from. He writes his books in the form of entertaining “leadership fables”, similar to books written by Patrick Lencioni and Ken Blanchard, who writes the “Foreword” for this book.
In this book, we are reunited with Debbie Brewster, who we met in Miller and Blanchard’s book The Secret: What Great Leaders Know and Do. Debbie took her Operations team from “worst to first” in that book, but is discouraged and having challenges with her new team. And she is not the only one discouraged. She has heard rumors that many other leaders and their teams across the organization are also struggling. Evidence of this can be seen in the eroding customer base, and falling stock price. The company is facing increased competition, increased costs, increasing customer expectations and leadership capacity restraints.
Debbie decides to set up a meeting with her old mentor and company CEO Jeff Brown. He confirms that the company is in trouble, and gives her an assignment to find the secret of great teams. He sees the key to the company’s turnaround being through high performance teams. Jeff encourages Debbie to start by studying the best teams, those that are doing it right. He wants her to include her own team from Operations in that study. He tells her that the answers that she discovers in her quest to help her new team excel may help other teams within the organization.
Debbie gets to work with her team on her assignment from Jeff to help take teams across the organization to the next level. The team eventually agrees to look at high performance teams from the Special Forces, NASCAR, and a leading restaurant. What they find is that while the teams may use different language, the key ingredients that they shared were consistent. And, those ingredients matched up with what Debbie saw as the keys to success with her Operations team.
Debbie and her team then have to decide how to take their findings to the leaders of their organization. They do a pilot with twenty-five leaders and experience mixed results, finding that this is a much bigger change management initiative than they had expected. They quickly realize that the journey to becoming a high-performance team always must begin with leadership.
There is much to learn in this book about how to build a high-performance team that delivers results for your organization. A helpful “High-Performance Team Assessment” is included at the end of the book.

[Ashik Uzzaman · Rating 4 out of 5]

A few days ago I finished another leadership business fable "The Secret of Teams: What Great Teams Know and Do" by Mark Miller. Through the character Debbie Brewster and her mentor Jeff Brown, the author reveals to us the secrets of high performing teams

In this book what we find is that there are three pillars of high performing teams - talent, skills and community. And the author emphasizes that all three of these need to be there for a team to succeed.

Talent is acquired in a team through selecting the right team members. Without right talent, the team won't be able to perform well. So a lot of emphasis on the selection process. I remember Patrick Lencioni refers it as getting the right people on the bus. Of course this selection process includes not only just hiring but also firing to make sure the team consists of right talents.

Skills are increased and improved through continuous training of the team members. Winning is hard work which wont come without constant practice.

Community is the ultimate gelling factor amongst that turns some individual performers into a group of coherent team members. The group spirit will develop and thrive when team members genuinely care about each other. This is the secret sauce that makes the sum greater than the whole.

Bu then the goal for leaders is not to build a high performing team but rather achieve results. High performing team is the strategy to achieve those results. Once leaders build a good team they should take less decisions and empower the team to come up with solutions.

Source: http://www.dragon-bishop.com/2021/06/...

[Larry Hostetler · Rating 3 out of 5]

Appreciated the information, but was distracted by the attempt to put the information in the form of a story. If it was a description of what really took place it seemed forced. If it was fictional it was not well done.

But the information about forming teams is very good information. It seems a little simplistic but it rings true. I would have preferred it be a little longer with some real-life examples and experiences from the author. At the length is was it was a very quick read.

It's not the best book I've read on leadership but the information is interesting and valuable.

[Helfren · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most of us never been to a high performers team. The size of a challenge is the great idea that can create a great competitive advantage. Generate an amazing results by studying the best.

Find the team that's doing right. A general comes to give speech and when being thanked for his years of services, the first thing come from his mouth was- he is proud to serve. A great leader and team always ready to serve anytime.

A team is a combination of different flavour of thing. A good book on team-building.

[Jeffrey Bush · Rating 3 out of 5]

Selection – it matters who is on the team. People with the right attitude and aptitude.

Training – you must prepare your people. Training keeps people sharp. Problem-solving, and decision making are a few of the things people must learn. Training is the mother of consistency. People do not see the training rather the outcome, but the training is necessary for the right outcome.

Group spirit – when this exists, people will work harder and longer because of their comrades. An atmosphere where care and concern exists. The best leaders create this environment.

[Amanda · Rating 2 out of 5]

My team at work read this book. I was not impressed with it. The concepts and ideas surrounding an ideal "high performance" team are good and I agree with the author. However, the story and the characters are too idealistic and not everything is as cut and dry as the book describes. I think each team/organization is different and part of the challenge is trying to adapt these principals to your own workplace and team. Doable but a challenge to get everyone on board.

[Giorgos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book! A good team is highly connected and associated with good leadership. A leader must do the right things, rather than doing things right. A team to be considered a high performance one; the team members must have space to breathe, suggest ideas, make mistakes and learn from them. Talent, skill and community are required, though can be build and strengthen if you let time do its magic. Nobody was born perfect!

[Lori-Lisa Van Gelder · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fijn, en door de typische "blanchard" manier van vertellen, een makkelijk te volgen boek die uitlegt welke 3 focuspunten een leider moet hebben om van een matig team en high performing te maken. Aanrader.

[Jeremy · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was good but felt overly broad. I'm thankful Miller followed up with a series of books to unpack the pillars of talent, skills, and community. I did like the unpacking at the end of the different structures of teams.

[Kathleen Geldart · Rating 2 out of 5]

Great concepts for a team/organization that doesn’t know where to start. Too much fluff. I understand it’s supposed to be a story but it didn’t go deep enough for me. Maybe because my team is already way beyond this info and I needed something more.

[Ashish Arora · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don’t think the framework of talent, skills and community had anything new to offer but I enjoyed the story but change management across the company and learnt from the approach that the characters take in the book to start a company wide movement of building ‘High performance teams’.

[Angie Laski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really good book, it teaches you how to work as a team, understand your co-workers and situations they maybe going through and be a good leader by edifying problems and qualities on team members.

[Taylor Walburg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Simple framework on the power of teams built on a narrative. Interesting presentation. Great content.

[Conrad Toft · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meh! I didn’t feel I learned much in this beyond the obvious. I normally enjoy the teaching from story style but it just felt forced here. A four-page note could have given the same information.

[Murtuza]

Nice

[Hayri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yüksek performans gösteren takımların sahip oldukları ortak özellikler: Yetenek, Beceri ve Topluluk. Tüm bunları sağlayan ve birleştiren Liderlik.

[Salvatore Fusco · Rating 3 out of 5]

Surprise team building book, wasn’t bad

[Jennifer Wright · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quick easy book about the core values of leadership. Also discusses how just training is not enough to change patterns of behavior.

[Martina McGowan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Secret of Teams

The secret to Mark Miller's book, "The Secret of Teams, " is what great teams, and of course, leaders do. How do you make the transition from knowing to doing? "The Secret of Teams" is here to help answer some of your questions. How do you take your group from doing ho-hum, "good enough for government" work to a unit willing to pursue the best in themselves and in each other?

Talent, skill and community, Miller tells us is what makes great teams great.

The focus first must be on leadership

Authentically caring about the people in your charge, as a leader is vital. Knowing who you, and what you are not, what you know and can do, and what you cannot are important aspects of leading yourself, even before you worry about leading someone else. These are also important first steps in building a vital, vibrant and integrated team.
Great leaders and great teams don't just "drift" into existence, to use Mark's phrase. These teams and leaders focus consistently on developing and seeking out talent, honing new and old skills, and building a sense of community that makes a loosely associated group of people into a well-oiled, high-functioning, high-performing unit.

The team is everyone's business and job

Every person on the high-functioning teams hold first degree accountability for the team's successes and failures.
Everyone on the team is on the lookout for fresh talent within and without to improve the team. One of the best interactions in the book is with a pit crew boss. He can already see some rudimentary skills in one of his young guys that may translate into being a great driver. He can only see this because he is paying attention, he knows his people.
Everyone on the team is working to get better, both as individuals players, and as a unit.
Everyone wins and loses together, and each of these events is important as learning and growth opportunities.
Everyone is working to become the best version of themselves.
Everything matters.
Everyone matters.

Great teams don't just appear, they require hard work and dedication; but dedication to the right things.

This is an important read for teams and leaders who are struggling, for new leaders, and some new wrinkles in how seasoned leaders think about team building.

[Ash Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Mark Miller takes a page from Aristotle's book and opens his story by noting that if we want to know what makes a team exceptional, we should begin by studying exceptional teams. He then proceeds to do so with a series of case studies from a variety of fields, showing how the same fundamental principles apply in each of them even if the terminology varies somewhat.[return][return]And the principles he identifies are indeed fundamental. First is selecting the right people to make up the team, who have the potential to fill the complementary roles required. Second is actualizing the potential of each individual team member through training or practice, leading to continual growth in their level of skill. The third is actually an integration of the first two, finding how each person fits into the team and practicing working together toward a common end. (Interestingly, all three of these principles have their counterparts in Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, so I guess Miller cribbed several pages from him!) Miller examines them all from multiple angles and gives several terms for each, so you can pick the ones that resonate with you and will be easiest to remember.[return][return]This might seem deceptively simple, but what Miller is actually doing here is modeling how to think inductively about anything, looking for those connections among seemingly disparate cases. He ably applies this integrative method of thought to exceptional teams, but the method itself may be of even greater value to the observant reader.[return][return]There is quite a lot of other good material in the book as he fleshes out how to follow through on putting these principles into practice. The only reason I don't give this a full five stars is that, while I think his basic approach here is excellent, his execution, though quite good, could have been improved upon in some areas. His discussion of enlightened self-interest was most welcome, for instance, but could be even better in some ways. Still, on the whole I would definitely recommend this book to anyone interested in the subject.[return][return]www.amazon.com/review/R3U2J4PWLO166K

[William "Spig" · Rating 4 out of 5]

5 Star Book! I consider Mark Miller to be a personal mentor. I can feel Ken Blanchard's integrity and love for leaders really come through is the short easy read book.

I love the format of telling a story while teaching. I really grasp and can find myself comparing and looking to apply the great teaching in The Secret.

Thanks so much for writing this book. My favorite thing are some of the great questions the book challenges the main character with. What is the purpose of your team?
• Where do you want your team to be in five years?
• What values do you want to drive the behavior of your team?
• How can you communicate your vision of the future to your team?

Also the explanation of "Heads up time vs. Heads down time" for leaders - vision vs. work. Leaders cannot delegate vision.

I am a Naval officer who just left command of a carrier based squadron and I hope that the Navy allows me to get back to command. This will be required reading as we attempt to SERVE our great country!

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good reminders:

Effective leaders bring and energetic mix of urgency and optimism.

The secret of teams, according to the authors, is threefold: 1) talent, 2) training and 3) teamwork.

Talent means selecting the right people. As Collins would say, "do what you have to do in order to get the right people on the bus and in the right seats."

Training means investing in those talented few so that they grow more effective and efficient, i.e. productive, over time.

Team building means focusing on the community element, cultivating healthy, joyful, authentic relationships in the group.


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[Tonya Willis-porath · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was assigned to me by my new manager/mentor. Our team is new, and she thought that this book would help kick off success. I think she was right. The book was written very differently than any 'management' book I have previously read. There was dialog, which made it feel more like a novel. That being said the message of "Talent, Skills, and Community" resonated well with not only me, but my new peers.

Excellent read for managers that really want to encourage a team environment. Great book.

[Emmanuel B · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books on successful team principles based on a fictional story. Mark Miller does an excellent job of teaching the reader what makes successful teams through interviews of successful leaders in different industries. As the reader, you are engaged throughout the story and can follow along principle through principle. You take away simple, effective and applicable principles of a high performance team.
A must read if you're a team leader or simply a team member looking to improve your team!

[Becky Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is written in a parable style and outlines the three important components of every great team.

I highly recommend this book for any leader who wants to be more effective in creating a high performing team, as it provides great direction and specific, helpful, action-oriented advice in a format that is easy to read and fun.

Read this title along with the others from Mark Miller, The Secret and Great Leaders Grow.

[Greg · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Secret of Teams is an easy read, and marginally entertaining (as a fable), but not especially helpful. It's not that it is wrong...it isn't. But it is written at such an abstract and labeled level that it really doesn't serve to help someone interested in leading a team to higher performance. For those wanting an introduction to creating high performance teams, there are better books.

[Bill Higley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not a huge fan of parable books, but as far as they go, this is pretty good. It serves as a solid introduction to team dynamics and success indicators. There are good team lessons and reminders to be had from it. Worth the investment & time to read, whether you're new to team thought, or as a good refresher to the practitioner.

[Jim Serger · Rating 5 out of 5]

TEAM- it means so much to any organization, but there is more to it than just creating a team.
Moving the team forward is the object of the game. In this book you will grasp what it means to be a part of a unit or team. Great book by a man who had seen first hand what a great team can do for a company and a community.

[Jay Hawes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good leadership book with those wanting to take their teams to the next level. Nothing groundbreaking but all-in-all an excellent reminder of what makes a great team tick. As a fable, I was able to read it in one sitting. It wasn't as engaging as a Lencioni book but I'd recommend it to anyone for a quick read.

[Ken · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oddly written, but wonderfully helpful book on the essence of building powerful and creative business teams. It's written as a story, which I appreciate because I tend to find most business help books to be overly boring tomes. It's strange to read a book written that way, but I quickly became grateful for the help. The books also contains terrific, thoughtful help in this process.