Why Dream Teams Fail
Fortune Magazine article from June has a great article entitled "Why Dream Teams FAIL" It may be tempting to recruit all-stars and let ’em rip. Dream teams often become nightmares of dysfunction. Read the entire article here.
Silos, Politics, and Turf Wars — Patrick Lencioni does it again
Marketing won’t speak to engineering. Sales thinks production hogs the budget. Front desk believes back room’s lazy. If this sounds anything like what you deal with on your team then you need to read Patrick Lencioni’s latest book entitled Silos, Politics, and Turf Wars (buy the book at amazon) Lencioni presents a model for achieving alignment […]
Teamwork Metaphor: Cluster Ballooning
It’s called “cluster balooning” and it’s for those who’ve dreamed of being carried into the sky by a giant bouquet of colorful toy balloons. The most famous cluster balloon flight took place in 1982. Larry Walters, with no prior ballooning experience, attached 42 helium weather balloons to a lawnchair, intending to go up a few […]
Death By Meeting – taking on the oldest and most dreaded complaints in the working world: bad meetings!
Are your meetings dull and uninspiring? Do team members question the usefulness of meetings? Are critical issues avoided or overlooked during meetings? If you answered YES to any of the above then your team might be suffering from Death By Meeting syndrome – – you know, your meetings STINK and everyone hates them. Death By Meeting was […]
Facilitative Learning – An Interview with Dr. Michael Gass
There is a 12 ounce glass and it has 6 ounces of water in it. Is this glass half empty or half full? In this audio interview, Dr. Michael Gass of the University of New Hampshire offers his unique persective on this puzzle. You’ll hear how he uses this glass-of-water metaphor to share powerful distinctions between “PROBLEM-Focused […]
Crucial Confrontations – An Interview with Ron McMillan
How do you resolve broken promises, violated expecations and bad behavior AND do it in a way that will actually strengthen the relationship? This is the question Ron McMillan answers in his 2005 book Crucial Confrontations which became a NY Times Best Seller. One of my favorite writers on teams and organizational development is Tom Peters and he says […]