Boynton: Virtuoso Teams_p

by Bill Fischer and Andy Boynton

Book Overview

"A fascinating study of creative teamwork. The final chapter on how to "turbo-charge" less-than-exceptional teams is worth the cover price of the book." Director

"What a pleasure to read... the case studies are excellent." -The Financial Times, July 2005

Lead a very special kind of team. The virtuoso team.

At the heart of a great change or creative breakthrough you will often find a dynamic team of inspired individuals who work together to break out of the common place and make something remarkable happen. A team that generates more creativity, more energy and the very best performance.

This is a book about those revolutionary teams that are catalysts for big change and breakthrough performances. Unlimited by the conventional approach to teamwork Virtuoso Teams are frequently contentious and always less comfortable, but if you can pull together the right people and manage them in the right way, the results can be extraordinary. Virtuoso teams don't last forever, but their members almost always go on to become leaders in their field's next generation.

The rules of the game are different for virtuoso teams and their leaders. This book will show you how to play to the standards of some of the greatest uncompromising, creative and catalytic teams of our times. Andy Boynton & Bill Fisher introduce you to some of the most compelling and wide-ranging stories of remarkable team leadership ever assembled, from Miles Davis, a serial innovator who surrounded himself with virtuoso talent at least three times, to change the face of jazz, to Thomas Edison, The Manhattan Project to West Side Story. Find out how these teams set out to revolutionize their worlds, and how you can build and manage a Virtuoso Team of your own.

Whether you're launching an innovative new product or service; entering into challenging new markets or simply trying to transform the way you operate, virtuoso teams can make the difference between achieving a high-impact success and just another modest outcome.

"I never thought I would be extolling the virtues of a book on Virtuoso Teams unless it specifically pertained to baseball. Nevertheless here I am praising a book on the advisability of developing Virtuoso Teams--regardless of the type of organization in which you belong.

If you aspire to develop an organization of high-performers or take an organization of high-performers to an even higher "next level"-- Andy Boynton and Bill Fischer's Virtuoso Teams is a definite must read "

George Steinbrenner, Managing General Partner, New YorkYankees Baseball Club

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0273721836
• ISBN13: 9780273721833
• Release Date: December 2008
• Publisher: FT Press
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 1.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.3" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Triggering!

Virtuoso Teams is a great book. Not only for its very insightful lessons of history but moreover for its truly stimulating content: When discussing this book with colleagues and friends, everyone had at least one example of a virtuoso team to which they once belonged. And this probably is the greatest asset of this book, that it will trigger you to once again create the conditions to a virtuoso team and to relive that great successful experience! Marnix Mali

Your thinking about building great teams may be faulty.

Boynton and Fisher have produced a small gem of a book that provides a refreshing, and some might say a revolutionary view of how to staff and manage transformational teams. They support their non-traditional perspective on to build virtuosity into collective endeavors by offering brief, but thoroughly engaging histories of seven such remarkable teams. Sharing the ins and outs of such diverse collaborative efforts as the production of West Side Story, the Manhattan Project, the light bulb, Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows, Amundsen's successful voyage to the South Pole, Miles Davis' revolutionary jazz recordings, and Norsk Hydro's crisis management approach, Boynton and Fisher discern seven lessons for how virtuoso teams can drive transformational change. 1. Virtuoso team leaders drive the culture, vision, and action within the team context. 2. Virtuoso team leaders recruit the very best talent and never settle for what's available. 3. Virtuoso team leaders double-stretch the customer and the team to achieve ambitious goals. 4. Virtuoso team leaders spotlight the individual "I" within the team, and not the conventional "we." 5. Organizations cultivate a marketplace for talent within the organization to facilitate the creation of virtuoso teams. 6. Virtuoso team leaders actively span boundaries and act as powerful conduits of ideas. 7. Virtuoso team leaders stimulate idea flow by managing space, processes, and time. (p. 3) To insure that virtuoso teams work, the authors share "a systematic process that can serve as a catalyst to higher team performance." (p. 164) They dub this process the "Deep Dive," having adapted a similar approach used by the design firm IDEO to help their clients design and develop new products. Boynton and Fisher refocus the IDEO process use by teams charged with designing the "best solutions possible within certain constraints, to do this fast and to offer sufficient novelty in (these) solutions so as to overcome otherwise intractable problems." (p. 167) To this reader, their process seems one that could be implemented relatively quickly by a talented and highly-motivated team. Your organization may only need the kinds of transformational outcomes provided by virtuoso teams on rare occasions, but when such a need arises, here is a resource that should not be far from your desk. The creative and innovative among you might even be able to adapt some of their ideas to enliven the productivity of your on-going groups and teams. Boynton and Fisher offer a new way of thinking about how major changes might be made in organizations. It was a pleasure to travel along with them on their journey through some of history's more remarkable virtuoso teams. I heartily recommend you climb on board.

Inspiring teams, unifying leadership

Too often books on teams take case studies from sports teams. This book draws real life examples of teams who had breakthrough experiences - from TV script writers to Antartic exploration, to oil reserves. The last section of the book has a very practical "how to do it yourself" guide to apply it to your own business or community challenge. As a buisness owner and Chairman I will be using these ideas with my people. The step by step guide on how to build your own Virtuoso team and do a "Deep Dive" is easy to follow and I believe would make sense in all cultures ( I have 10 different nationalities in my business) . It is a useful addition to the body of literature on teams - highly recommended