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A look in the current business literature indicates an increasing interest in using teams in today's workplace. In the plethora of books on teams and teaming, it is widely chronicled that work groups, labeled teams, can effectively accomplish more than individuals, and that through working in teams, employees will be more motivated and energized. Each of us has grown up hearing the old adage that states, "two (or more) heads are better than one." All of these indicators would seem to point the way toward creating teams in organizations to increase productivity. Sometimes in organizations, however, "doing teams" has taken on the same superficial meaning and hollow promise as the old Hollywood phrase of "doing lunch." Everyone talks about it, but what really comes of the promise? Part of the problem, according to Jon Katzenbach and Douglas Smith in their new book, The Wisdom of Teams, is that team is a word and concept that is familiar to everyone, yet holds many different personal meanings. To find out how and if teams really support some of the widely held beliefs about them, Katzenbach and Smith interviewed hundreds of people working in fifty teams across thirty companies and organizations.
The executive in a rush could read the prologue of the book to discover the authors' major findings on teams. That would, however, be like eating an orange for the pulp and skipping the juice. The authors convey their findings through stories about people in organizations who are actively involved in teaming. These stories represent a wide variety of performance challenges, types of people, and organizational environments. The authors draw out what they call some "common sense findings," and some "uncommon sense findings" to help those who consider adopting team concepts and who want to understand their nature, the process of becoming a team, and exploit the potential of teams in their own organizations.
There is a primary common sense finding that...