Why do good teams fail? Very often, argue Deborah Ancona and Henrik Bresman, it is because they are looking inward instead of outward. Based on years of research examining teams across many industries, Ancona and Bresman show that traditional team models are falling short, and that what’s needed--and what works--is a new brand of team that emphasizes external outreach to stakeholders, extensive ties, expandable tiers, and flexible membership. The authors highlight that X-teams not only are able to adapt in ways that traditional teams aren’t, but that they actually improve an organization’s ability to produce creative ideas and execute them—increasing the entrepreneurial and innovative capacity within the firm. What’s more, the new environment demands what the authors call “distributed leadership,” and the book highlights how X-teams powerfully embody this idea.

Teams That Lead: A Matter of Market Strategy, Leadership Skills, and Executive Strength strikes a balance between the current scholarly literature that exists in these fields and its impact on teams. The focus on leading executive teams makes this book unique. It provides three lenses with which to view team leadership and how those various lenses can assist in making teams more effective. The first focuses on paying close attention to the market strategy of the organization and how it should drive key decisions. The second focuses on the multiple roles of the designated leader of a team. The third focus shifts to executive teams and how to be a highly effective team player in the executive environment. Each section is grounded in theoretical and empirical evidence. How this information can then be translated into useful knowledge for practitioners and researchers follows. To make it practical, however, the book provides examples, cases, measuring tools, and questions. This book will be of interest to students and professors in MBA programs, organizational behavior, public policy, and psychology courses. Practitioners, such as consultants, facilitators, trainers, and executive coaches will also be interested.

Learn how to become a great manager in this Wall Street Journal bestseller from the leadership experts at FranklinCovey. The essential guide when you make the challenging yet rewarding leap to manager. Based on nearly a decade of research on what makes managers successful, Everyone Deserves a Great Manager includes field-tested tips, techniques, and the top advice from hundreds of thousands of managers all over the world. Organized by the four main roles every manager fills, this must-read guide focuses on how to lead yourself, people, teams, and change to success. No matter what your current problem or time constraint, pick up a helpful tip in ten minutes or glean an entire skillset by developing people skills and clarity through straightforward advice. Dive into common managerial tasks like one-on-ones, giving feedback, delegating, hiring, building team culture, and leading remote teams, with useful worksheets and a list of questions for your next interview. An approachable, engaging style using real-world stories, Everyone Deserves a Great Manager provides the blueprint for becoming the great manager every team deserves.

"Great teams are comprised of ordinary people that are empowered and inspired. They are empowered to solve hard problems in ways their customers love yet work for their business. They are inspired with ideas and techniques for quickly evaluating those ideas to discover solutions that work: they are valuable, usable, feasible and viable. This book is about the idea and reality of "achieving extraordinary results from ordinary people". Empowered is the companion to Inspired. It addresses the other half of the problem of building tech products?how to get the absolute best work from your product teams. However, the book's message applies much more broadly than just to product teams. Inspired was aimed at product managers. Empowered is aimed at all levels of technology-powered organizations: founders and CEO's, leaders of product, technology and design, and the countless product managers, product designers and engineers that comprise the teams. This book will not just inspire companies to empower their employees but will teach them how. This book will help readers achieve the benefits of truly empowered teams"--

Lead each person on your team up the learning curve. What's the secret to having an engaged and productive team? It's having a plan for developing all employees--no matter where they are on their personal learning curves. Better morale and higher performance happen through learning, argues Whitney Johnson. In over twenty years of coaching, investing, and consulting, Johnson has seen that employees need continuous learning and fresh challenges to stay motivated. The best bosses know this, and they know how to make it happen by thoughtfully designing people’s jobs around the skills they have today as well as the skills they'll need to be even more valuable tomorrow. That's how entire organizations stay competitive in an unpredictable, rapidly changing business environment. In this book, Johnson explains how to become one of those bosses and how to build your A-team by: Identifying what your employees already know and what they need to learn Designing their jobs to maximize engagement and learning Applying a seven-step process for leading each person up their learning curve We all want opportunities to learn, experiment, and grow in our jobs. When our bosses work with us to help us leap to new challenges, the result is a team that knows how to thrive, no matter what the future holds.

Improve group results as a successful leader-facilitator Now you can reap the benefits of a more facilitative, participative style of leadership! How to Lead Work Teams will help you increase cooperation and job satisfaction, raise productivity and quality levels, and gain a more favorable view of your leadership abilities through facilitation. It describes exactly what facilitation is and what it is not and how to do it effectively. It shows you how to: Involve others, build consensus, and get commitment Help others solve problems and make decisions Use the knowledge and experience of all employees Develop and lead a team Use group process to run effective team meetings This book is especially helpful for someone who is new to managing or leading a team. It will also help experienced team leaders refine the role of leader-facilitator. And it will help team members understand how facilitation works and how they can enhance the process. To read the first chapter from this book, click here.

Effective software teams are essential for any organization to deliver value continuously and sustainably. But how do you build the best team organization for your specific goals, culture, and needs? Team Topologies is a practical, step-by-step, adaptive model for organizational design and team interaction based on four fundamental team types and three team interaction patterns. It is a model that treats teams as the fundamental means of delivery, where team structures and communication pathways are able to evolve with technological and organizational maturity. In Team Topologies, IT consultants Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais share secrets of successful team patterns and interactions to help readers choose and evolve the right team patterns for their organization, making sure to keep the software healthy and optimize value streams. Team Topologies is a major step forward in organizational design for software, presenting a well-defined way for teams to interact and interrelate that helps make the resulting software architecture clearer and more sustainable, turning inter-team problems into valuable signals for the self-steering organization.