Product Description

Uncovers the elements of creative collaboration by examining six of the century's most extraordinary groups and distill their successful practices into lessons that virtually any organization can learn and commit to in order to transform its own management into a collaborative and successful group of leaders. Paper. DLC: Organizational effectiveness - Case studies.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #29379 in Books
• Published on: 1998-06-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780201339895
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Amazon.com Review
For years, Warren Bennis has written about leadership in works such as Learning to Lead, Beyond Leadership, and the bestselling On Becoming a Leader. His aim in these well-received titles was to catalog the traits and styles of leadership that help individuals excel in their work. In his new book (and already another bestseller) Organizing Genius, Bennis declares the age of the empowered individual ended: what matters now is "collaborative advantage" and the assembling of powerful teams. Drawing from six case studies that include Xerox's PARC labs, the 1992 Clinton campaign, and Disney animation studios, Bennis and coauthor Patricia Biederman distill the characteristics of successful collaboration, showing how talent can be pooled and managed for greater results than any individual is capable of producing. Organized in easily digested chapters and written in clear, concise prose, Organizing Genius will be useful to folks finding their way in new organizational structures. The lessons Bennis and Biederman offer in the final chapter of the book don't constitute the obvious advice most business books convey; these are real experiences gleaned from the stories of collaboration they surveyed.

From Publishers Weekly
University of Southern California business professor Bennis and Los Angeles Times reporter Biederman examine six "Great Groups" whose work affected and sometimes changed the modern world. They are the Disney organization and its animated films; the Xerox Corporation's Palo Alto Research Center, which designed the first user-friendly computer; the Clinton presidential campaign of 1992 for what the authors deem a remarkable victory; Lockheed's Skunk Works, where the U-2 spy plane and the Stealth bomber were developed; Black Mountain College in the foothills of North Carolina, which lasted only from 1933 to 1956 but attracted many major artists; and the Manhattan Project, whose scientists created the atomic bomb. All of these groups, the authors stress, consisted of enormously talented people with a sense of mission, who worked under a strong leader and were imbued with pragmatic optimism. Each segment is so well told that it has lessons for all.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
To determine the characteristics of creative groups, Bennis (business administration, Univ. of Southern California) and Biederman, a Los Angeles Times reporter, here consider Disney Productions, PARC-r&d for Xerox, President Clinton's presidential campaign, Lockheed's Skunk Works, Black Mountain College, and the Manhattan Project. The authors conclude that creative groups usually operate in dull or tacky surroundings, are young and optimistic past the point of realism ("Great groups believe they're on a mission from God against a big, bad enemy"), are poorly paid, and go unrecognized. In these examples, many of the leaders were difficult to verbally abusive. The authors warn that it is possible for great minds to work in groups to accomplish great evil, and care must be taken to scrutinize the intended results. Sexual references are included that do not add to the story and are in poor taste. The authors acknowledge the noticeable absence of female participants in creative groups but do not give an adequate explanation. While interesting, this is not a necessary purchase.?Peggy D. Odom, Texas Lib. Assn., Waco
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

disappointing and rambling, with interesting tid bits
It never ceases to astonish me how little substance there is to most business books: they tend to take a few ideas, puff them up with facts and stories, and then paste them together into a book when a single article - or indeed the flap of the book - would more than suffice. Alas, though Bennis is a brilliant man and great expert on leadership, his book fails on many counts.

First, throughtout the text, the ideas are not that well delineated. So you get lots of stories that are often intersting and fun, but you wonder why all the details are included. Second, I didn't see what the book really adds: sure leaders can be both remarkable and difficult; sure, some teams are extraordinary; sure, we could use more great teams. But how do you do it? THe book doesn't provide much on that as a practical guide (its third failing).

Nonetheless, I thought this book was very well written, which is almost certainly Bierderman's contribution. ALso, it is fun to read the stories on their own. Finally, the sumup chapter has useful ideas (and frankly, it - just 15 pages - is all that you would need to read if you don't find the stories inherently interesting).

Tepidly recommended.

Successful Structures for Super Team Perfomance
This is an informative book on leadership qualities and insights by Warren Bennis, who is a distinguished professor of business administration at USC, and who has also advised at least four presidents. Bennis discusses four organizations that were able to combine incredibly gifted people in such a synergy as to create hitherto unknown super-accomplishments: Walt Disney Studios with the first full-length animated film, Xerox and Apple with the first user friendly computer, Lockheed's Skunkworks with the first US jet fighter, and the Manhattan Project which yeilded the atomic bomb. What were the key ingredients to their success? What did they do wrong, but succeeded in spite of such matters? These questions are entertainingly answered in this book.
Among the fifteeen traits listed are: always having an enemy, seeing themselves as the underdogs, isolating themselves from unnecessary outside interferences, and hiring people that have both great ability and a talent for collaboration.
Interesting and Useful - Five Stars

Manages to state the obvious in a misleading way
First of all, it seems unlikely to me that there are too many people left that don't recognize the importance of multidisciplinary teamwork in pursuing truly important, breakthrough work.

However, even though the notion is fairly widespread it would STILL be useful to have a guide to implementing such a strategy in one's own organization. Unfortunately, Bennis and Biederman blew a good chance to do this and I was extremely disappointed by their book.

The book creates a very misleading approach to collaborative teams by concentrating exclusively on the sort of "work all night until you drop dead because nothing in the world means as much to you as this project" sort of mindset. Frankly, I don't want people like that anywhere near me. But having led and participated in many successful multidisciplinary design teams I can frankly attest that this kind of mindset is not only totally superfluous - it is also ultimately destructive.

Yes, you can have a life AND be on a successful collaborative team. You don't have to be an eccentric nut and/or a workaholic. Too bad the authors created such a misleading representation of what promises to be a very important approach to work in the next century.