The Discipline of Teams: A Mindbook-Workbook for Delivering Small Group Performance

by Jon R. Katzenbach, Douglas K. Smith

An essential guide for any small group that must deliver team performance.

With the demand for project-oriented work and faster, more nimble responses, successful small-group performance is more crucial than ever. Katzenbach and Smith, authors of the international bestseller The Wisdom of Teams, have again joined forces, revealing how to implement the disciplines, frameworks, tools, and techniques required for team- and small-group performance. Combining their insights and practical strategies, they offer concepts and pragmatic, doable exercises for team leaders and team members to deliver results. Hot topics covered why small-group performance demands expertise at two disciplines, team level and leader level, instead of one; virtual teams; and global teams. This book combines practical exercises with cutting-edge insights, and both authors are authorities on the subject.

Attend a featured author workshop at the 13th International Conference on Work Collaborating for Competitive Advantage, September 23-25, 2002, in Dallas, TX. For information, contact the Center for the Study of Work Teams at 940 565 3096 or visit them online at www.workteams.unt.edu.

Genres: Management, Nonfiction, Business, Leadership, Self Help, College

256 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2001

Reviews

[Gary Butler · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is less than 80 pages which is the cut off line for a book to be entered onto my all time book list. I do not really consider this to be a book at all. This is a mere 61 pages, which gets it a written review instead of a video review. This an abbreviated version of the much larger book by the same name and by the same author. I have not read the larger version, but I can guess that this much smaller version just contains a few of the other books main points. It will either serve readers in one of three ways: 1) as a quick reference to the main points of the larger version; 2) to wet the whistle of the reader to want to read the larger version because the topic seems so wondrous; 3) to let them know the larger version is not for them and a waste of time. The book has similar main point that are found in other team building or business literature in general. No new ideas are present that I can find, but they are reorganized and repackaged into a nicer format. The book is super tiny (6.5 inches tall by 4 inches wide), so if your interested it will not take a lot of your time. Is the book really worth the cover price of almost 9 bucks? I leave the value to the readers who seek out to add this to their reference section. 3 out of 5

[Saravanan Oumabady · Rating 3 out of 5]

This article sheds light on the usually unseen aspects of team building and management. Reading through the pages, I felt the collective experience being shared in a structured manner. Most of the team building aspects and ideas from this article still hold good. When a modern team is considered, some of the aspects need a clear temporal upgrade but this is the readers job to make the difference by themselves.
I enjoyed specifically the differentiation of work groups and teams, which I expect to remember and use in whatever job I do.
Writing could have been made simpler but overall a thorough learning experience.

[Rebecca Dominici]

The book had like three points and repeated them 50 times just with other words. Sometimes even the same ones.

[Héctor Iván Patricio Moreno · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gran introducción al rendimiento de los equipos. Lo que más me impactó de este artículo es hacer la distinción entre grupos de trabajo y equipos. Un equipo se distingue de un grupo de trabajo por el las siguientes restricciones:

1. Se requiere un rendimiento mayor que el que la suma de todos los rendimientos individuales que conforman el grupo de trabajo
2. Los equipos están unidos por un mismo propósito que los motiva
3. Lo que guía el rendimiento es la responsabilidad que cada miembro del equipo tiene con el objetivo primario y con cada uno de los miembros
4. El resultado del trabajo son productos en los que todos los miembros trabajaron
5. Los miembros del equipo tienen habilidades complementarias

Estas características permiten que el rendimiento de este grupo personas sea mucho mayor comparado con lo que pueden lograr cada uno de ellos individualmente, pero tiene riesgos que hay que evaluar si vale la pena correr.

El artículo-libro habla más sobre los tipos de trabajo que puede hacer un equipo y las cosas que deben tener en cuenta.

Creo que es un lectura que vale la pena sobre todo para los encargados de formar equipos y establecer la dinámica de trabajo en sus organizaciones.

[Garrett Haynes · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am giving this 3 stars because of the readability of the book. It is an assigned book from my business program and I can see why they chose it. It melds with our other books pretty well as for the content and thrust of the material but is is tough to read. It is more technical and heavy writing, which makes it hard to keep focused while reading and you need to read it slow, which makes the book seem very long. I never get around to it, but in between chapters there are lots of great questions and team exercises if you can take the time to go through them.

[Ashley Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I learned that the teams I work on don't have a lot of discpline.

[Paul Bard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Team vs working group: a team does real work together.

Teams either advise, make, or manage things.

Teams augment hierarchy with team accountability.

Pretty great article.