Great Business Teams
Book

Great Business Teams

Cracking the Code for Standout Performance

Howard M. Guttman
Wiley, 2008
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Editorial Rating

8

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Recommendation

Howard Guttman gives readers a sophisticated view of all the factors that go into creating high-performing, exceptionally successful teams. He doesn’t pretend that a single magic bullet can transform your team; instead, he provides a well-organized guide that shows you how leaders contribute, what team members must bring, why management support is needed to transform a good team into a great one and how coaching can accelerate a team’s transformation. The book provides a great discussion on how top teams make decisions, how they communicate, and how they decide which meetings to hold and how to hold them. The book is full of ideas and illustrative stories from Guttman’s consultancy, but you never feel that he is selling his consulting services or holding back any information. getAbstract recommends this sensible and useful book to team managers and members.

Summary

Understanding High Performance

You know a high-performing team when you see one. When you get to work within one, life can become a type-A dream. Unfortunately, these special teams seem to last only for a brief time and then disappear, but you can replicate their qualities by nurturing five characteristics that high performance teams share:

  1. High-performing leaders – Turn your company’s challenges into a personal, living, burning force in the hearts and minds of your team members. Foster authentic relationships among members. Live the principles you preach and expect from them.
  2. Team-oriented action and leadership – Great teams don’t focus on individuals, no matter how talented. The leader must exemplify a total team orientation.
  3. Protocols and procedures – Great teams avoid chance and randomness as much as possible. They do not rely on luck. They use standardized protocols and procedures, and constantly improve them as they learn from experience.
  4. Constant improvement – Great teams are never complacent. They build on today’s success...

About the Author

Howard M. Guttman, also the author of When Goliaths Crash, consults on building high-performing teams, coaching executives and enhancing business performance. He has had many articles published in major industry journals.

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    P. J. 1 decade ago
    The writer Howard M. Guttman is an expert in finding the requisites in making a great team for a great performance. Focus on proper communication, goal, activities in sync, measuring result at a regular period is what makes the job easy in accomplishing the task.The pillars on which stand the ingredients of transformation are keeping the simple and clear cut communication, undertaking achievable work, instilling the spirit of leaders to lead from the front and keeping always in mind the vision and mission. i do agree with the author on the subject.