Who's in the Room?: How Great Leaders Structure and Manage the Teams Around Them

by Bob Frisch

Is your company run by a team with no name? At the top of every organization chart lies a myth―that a Senior Management Team makes a company's critical decisions. The reality is that critical decisions are typically made by the boss and a small group of confidants―a "team with no name"―outside of formal processes. Meanwhile, other members of the management team wonder why they weren't in the room or even consulted ahead of time. The dysfunction that results from this gap between myth and reality has led to years of unproductive team building exercises. The problems, Frisch shows, are ones of process and structure, not psychology. In Who's in the Room? Bob Frisch provides a unique perspective to this widely misunderstood issue. Flying in the face of decades of organizational psychology, he argues that the solution lies not in addressing behaviors, but in unseating the senior management team as the epicenter of decision making. Using a broad portfolio of teams―large and small, permanent and temporary, formal and informal―great leaders match each decision to the appropriate team in a fluid, flexible approach that you won't find described in management textbooks. Who's in the Room? is based on interviews with CEOs at organizations ranging from MasterCard to Ticketmaster to The Red Cross. Organizations will get better decisions and superior results by unleashing the full potential of their Senior Management Teams. And bosses will see a dramatic drop-off in people coming into their offices asking, "Why wasn't I in the room?"

Genres: Leadership, Buisness, Business, Management

208 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2011

About the author

For over 30 years, Bob has worked with Senior Executive Teams and Boards on their most vital strategic and organizational challenges, both as a consultant and a corporate executive. He is considered one of the world’s leading strategic facilitators, having designed and conducted offsites in fifteen countries with companies ranging from Fortune 10 multinationals to German mittelstand family businesses.

Bob is the author of four Harvard Business Review articles: Off-Sites That Work (June 2006, co-authored with Logan Chandler), When Teams Can’t Decide (November 2008), Who Really Makes The Big Decisions in Your Company? (December 2011), and Leadership Summits That Work (March 2015, co-authored with Cary Greene). HBR named When Teams Can’t Decide one of ten ‘must read’ articles on teams. His first book, Who’s In The Room? How Great Leaders Structure and Manage the Teams Around Them, quickly became an Amazon bestseller in the categories of Leadership and Decision Making, and is now in distribution in 12 countries.

Before founding the Strategic Offsites Group, Bob was a Managing Partner of Accenture, where he helped create

the Organization & Change Strategy practice. Bob joined Accenture from Cap Gemini Sogeti, where he founded the firm’s global capability in Corporate Vision and Growth and led Gemini Consulting’s Strategy practice for the Americas Region. He began his career at the Boston Consulting Group where he was among the last consultants to train under the legendary Bruce Henderson.

Bob’s executive roles began when he went to work for a client, running planning and business development for

The Dial Corporation. Bob went on to become the youngest Division President of this Fortune 500 company, now

a division of Henkel. A decade later, he took another temporary leave from consulting to head corporate strategy for Sears, Roebuck and Co. where he helped guide what was the largest voluntary restructuring in US corporate history.

Bob is a magna cum laude graduate of Tufts University and earned his MBA at the Yale School of Management.

Dangerous Company, a best-selling book on the consulting industry, says of Bob: “He has been there, small company and big, strategy and operations. He has lived much of his professional life on the road or in the corridors of power of huge institutions. In the game of business, he is equipped to be the perfect coach.”

Reviews

[Matthew Parsons · Rating 5 out of 5]

I liked this book. Started with dispelling the myth of Executive Leadership Team and discussed the ways and with who key decisions are made. Also provided best practices in business case evaluation beyond the hard financial impacts with an underscore on getting dependencies understood so real organizational commitments can be made. Finally initiatives were prioritized in a way to take some of the emotion and politics out and get aligned on what is a priority for now, soon or later vs must do, should do, nice to do. Using comparing initiated against each other to cluster the things in a meaningful way rather than an arbitrary forced ranking. Then tying these to bullseyes of the key goals and objectives helps to align on if the right initiatives for the right outcomes are really in play. Overall good perspectives and useful tools to lead and help teams be more productive and successful.

[Lakshmanan Ramanathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Candid revelation to a known secret for decades in the corporate world – Kitchen Cabinets. It offers insights to “When does the decision happen and with whom”. Contrary to perception that this is match fixing, this informal way expedites decision making from the tyranny of the organization chart

[VJ · Rating 3 out of 5]

#allstate casestudy

[Sean Vangordon · Rating 2 out of 5]

In the first half of the book, it is a very good analysis of leadership and executive styles and organizations. It is a good discussion about the importance of meetings vs. doing things. The author has several good suggestions about how to focus standing committees and top level executive committees. The book really falls down in the second half of the books. The author has good suggestions, but he doesn't have compelling examples. The book turns into a non-specific discussion about how the author helped certain businesses. Started strong, but ended weak.

[Eric Gastfriend · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book on how decisions get made in large organizations but I found a lot of the advice relevant to the startup environment as well. Bob Frisch is clearly an expert on this subject with a lot of experience and relevant examples pulled in from a wide variety of companies. Highly recommended.

[David Fhu · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is a highly recommended book for Senior Management. Author explain what is require from Senior Management Team and what is their task.