The Discipline of Teams

They took the world by storm with The Wisdom of Teams, the overwhelmingly successful bestseller that was translated into fifteen languages and sold more than 400,000 copies worldwide. Now, the world's two leading authorities on teams and team dynamics join forces once again to help organizations large and small implement the disciplines, frameworks, tools, and techniques that raise small-group performance to a whole new level. In The Discipline of Teams, Jon Katzenbach and Douglas Smith present significant insights on team performance that they have gained in the near-decade since the publication of Wisdom. They explore the two critical disciplines that drive performance in small groups, providing concrete steps that groups can take to ensure the use of the right discipline at the right time. They also address new developments such as virtual teaming and global teaming that both amplify the importance of team performance and present new challenges to achieving it. Providing detailed guidance and dozens of exercises that help reinforce team discipline, this mindbook-workbook helps small groups distinguish between outcome- and activity-based goals. It also provides the tools teams need to create and manage themselves according to a performance-based agenda. The authors detail the six basic principles of team discipline and offer guidance on applying these principles to team performance challenges. An important additional purpose of this book is to help teams exploit the opportunities presented by modern communication technology to accomplish group work and performance-while illustrating how team discipline plays just as critical a role in the achievements of global and virtual teams. Performance is key to team success-and The Discipline of Teams provides the conceptual and practical guidance that will help any team in any organization set and achieve performance goals beyond their wildest dreams.