Teams At the Top - Hardcover

Katzenbach, Jon R.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0875847897 ISBN 13: 9780875847894

Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press, 1998

Synopsis

Why is it that we often see less team performance at the top of organizations than we see elsewhere? Despite the label "teams," top leaders tend to avoid teaming and the real progress is made behind closed doors, not at the team meetings. After writing The Wisdom of Teams, Katzenbach discovered there are special dynamics that characterize leadership groups at the top. Many times so-called teams are really working groups with a single leader--and often, these non-team groups at the top work pretty well. He explains that the solution doesn't lie in mandating teams or in changing top leaders' styles, or even in designing a better top team structure; rather, the key is in clearly differentiating between team and non-team opportunities and developing the capability to shift into different leadership modes, different leadership roles, and appropriate team membership composition depending upon the desired results. High-performing organizations require a balanced leadership effort that fully exploits non-team as well as team approaches.

About this title

About the Author

Jon R. Katzenbach is a director of McKinsey & Company in Dallas. He is the co-author of the internationally acclaimed bestseller The Wisdom of Teams and The Real Change Leaders.

From the Back Cover

Rigorously objective and relentlessly realistic, Teams at the Top performs the greatest service a management book can render by deliberately avoiding simplistic, trendy prescriptions in favor of something much more enduring and substantial: understanding and insight. --Jim Collins, Co-author of Built to Last

Katzenbach has earned the reputation as the leading thinker on teams in organized enterprises, and this book will enhance that stature. As usual, his writing yields a nice balance of engaging description and conceptual prescription. --Richard E. Cavanagh, President and CEO, The Conference Board

I thoroughly enjoyed Teams at the Top. Katzenbach stimulates business leaders to enter new performance zones via proactive, passionate and practical use of teams. --James W. Rogers, President and CEO, GE Motors and Industrial Systems

Mr. Katzenbach's work significantly enhances our understanding of the elements of ongoing management excellence. His thesis on leveraging both individual efforts and the often latent capabilities of executive teams--discussed in a framework of practical applications--provides a means of increasing the effectiveness of all organizations. --John J. Mueller, Managing Director and CEO, 3M United Kingdom plc

Reviews

Using stories and diagrams, Katzenbach explains his theory of recognizing when a team effort at the top (executive management level) is preferable and when a working group under single leadership is more appropriate. An integrated balance of real teams, individuals, and single-leader groups is possible and desirable among top executives; one mode of behavior is not intrinsically better than the rest. The best leaders are able to constantly reshape their top executives into and out of team mode as appropriate, varying the top team's composition, behavior patterns, and leadership approach to maximize opportunities, depending upon the challenges and issues at hand. The author advises discipline to energize rather than stifle initiative and performance among top executives; the alignment of behaviors and decisions of people throughout the organization; and the balancing of the various elements of the organization for optimum results. We learn that while top executives of organizations rarely function as a team, such teams have the most potential for immediate results and yet are most often neglected. Mary Whaley

Edition details

• Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0875847897
• ISBN 13: 9780875847894
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256