Teaming: How Organizations Learn, Innovate, and Compete in the Knowledge Economy

280 Pages·2012·2.4 MB·English

by  Amy C. Edmondson

Table of Contents
Cover
Endorsements
Title page
Copyright
Foreword
Dedication
Introduction
Part One: Teaming
Chapter One: A New Way of Working
Teaming Is a Verb
Organizing to Execute
The Learning Imperative
Learning to Team, Teaming to Learn
Organizing to Learn
Execution-as-Learning
The Process Knowledge Spectrum
A New Way of Leading
Leadership Summary
LESSONS AND ACTIONS
Chapter Two: Teaming to Learn, Innovate, and Compete
The Teaming Process
Four Pillars of Effective Teaming
The Benefits of Teaming
Social and Cognitive Barriers to Teaming
When Conflict Heats Up
Leadership Actions That Promote Teaming
Leadership Summary
LESSONS AND ACTIONS
Part Two: Organizing to Learn
Chapter Three: The Power of Framing
Cognitive Frames
Framing a Change Project
The Leader’s Role
Team Members’ Roles
The Project Purpose
A Learning Frame Versus an Execution Frame
Changing Frames
Leadership Summary
LESSONS AND ACTIONS
Chapter Four: Making It Safe to Team
Trust and Respect
Psychological Safety for Teaming and Learning
The Effect of Hierarchy on Psychological Safety
Cultivating Psychological Safety
Leadership Summary
LESSONS AND ACTIONS
Chapter Five: Failing Better to Succeed Faster
The Inevitability of Failure
The Importance of Small Failures
Why It’s Difficult to Learn from Failure
Failure Across the Process Knowledge Spectrum
Matching Failure Cause and Context
Developing a Learning Approach to Failure
Strategies for Learning from Failures
Leadership Summary
LESSONS AND ACTIONS
Chapter Six: Teaming Across Boundaries
Teaming Despite Boundaries
Visible and Invisible Boundaries
Three Types of Boundaries
Teaming Across Common Boundaries
Leading Communication Across Boundaries
Leadership Summary
LESSONS AND ACTIONS
Part Three: Execution-as-Learning
Chapter Seven: Putting Teaming and Learning to Work
Execution-as-Learning
Using the Process Knowledge Spectrum
Facing a Shifting Context at Telco
Learning That Never Ends
Keeping Learning Alive
Leadership Summary
LESSONS AND ACTIONS
Chapter Eight: Leadership Makes It Happen
Leading Teaming in Routine Production at Simmons
Leading Teaming in Complex Operations at Children’s Hospital
Leading Teaming for Innovation at IDEO
Leadership Summary
Moving Forward
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Index
Teaming is a fresh new concept to organize the best knowledge available for
creating and maintaining effective action.”
—Chris Argyris, professor emeritus, Harvard University
“This is the ultimate book on teams and learning. Edmondson combines
academic rigor and relevance in a unique way. A must-read for scholars and
practitioners.”
—Bertrand Moingeon, professor, directeur général adjoint, and deputy dean,
executive education and academic development, HEC Paris
“Amy Edmondson is the best leader teacher I know. Her experience in the
classroom and her deep understanding of how leaders lead in the real world rings
loud and clear in this book.”
—Charlie Eitel, founding partner, Eitel & Armstrong; and former chairman
and CEO, Simmons Bedding
“Edmondson’s insights that teams are verbs rather than nouns, and that leaders
who focus on ‘teaming’ animate a more adaptive work environment, are a major
advance in our grasp of leading, organizing, and learning. This is the work of a
gifted, hands-on scholar at her best!”
—Karl E. Weick, Rensis Likert Distinguished University Professor,
organizational behavior and psychology, Stephen M. Ross School of Business,
University of Michigan
“Teaming is the book on how to lead and learn from innovative teams and
dispersed networks. Amy Edmondson has gathered a wealth of evidence,
experience, and illustrations to write the definitive playbook for learning and
bringing out the best in collaborative endeavors anywhere.”
—Michael Useem, professor of management, and director of the Leadership
Center, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
“The always-insightful Amy Edmondson has produced a terrific book. She
provides the best insights I have seen on failure and learning in teams. By
distinguishing between types of failures across her Knowledge Process
Spectrum, she shows how some types of failures should be discouraged and
minimized while others are essential for learning and advancement. Easy to read,
Teaming provides useful insights from start to finish.”
—Roger Martin, dean, Rotman School of Business, University of Toronto
“Teaming shows how organizations can inspire every employee to voice new
ideas, compensate every manager to reward the risk of experimentation, and
recognize every leader who empowers the collective quest for learning and
innovation. Edmondson has provided an articulate, indispensable guide for
organizations to succeed in an age of unprecedented change and competition.”
—Sean Woodroffe, vice president, human resources, Sun Life Financial U.S.
“Many of us have experienced or observed the drama of a hospital emergency
room where life-and-death split second decisions are made, and where priorities
and staff assignments shift unpredictably, even in the midst of caring for a
patient. Teaming describes a new way of working that achieves superior
outcomes in this chaotic environment, a setting for which past organizational
theory has fallen short.”
—Ray Gilmartin, professor of management practice, Harvard Business
School; and former CEO, Merck & Co.
“Edmondson goes to the very heart of the single biggest challenge we face in
the 21st century: while our problems are growing ever more complex, the
expertise we bring to those problems is growing ever more narrow. Only through
teams—or teaming, as Edmondson rightly argues—can we hope to learn across
boundaries and tackle the problems we face today. Using captivating stories
based on decades of research, this remarkably readable book explains why such
learning is hard, shows how it’s possible, and illustrates what it takes.
Beautifully written and cogently argued, it’s bound to be a classic.
—Diana McLain Smith, chief executive partner, New Profit Inc.; and author,
The Elephant in the Room: How Relationships Make or Break the Success of
Leaders and Organizations
“A must-read for managers at all levels who want to learn about cross-
boundary teams and how to lead them. Based on her extensive research and
consulting experience, Edmondson has written an authoritative, comprehensive,
and engaging book that I will recommend to my students and corporate clients.”
—Michael Beer, chairman, TruePoint Partners; and Center for Higher
Ambition Leadership Cahners-Rabb Professor Emeritus, Harvard Business
School
“No one has done more insightful research than Amy Edmondson on why
effective teams are effective. Every team leader needs to know what she knows.”
—Chip Heath, author, Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard
“Amy Edmondson has built a wide following for her studies on how
organizations learn and grow through cooperative work and enlightened
leadership. Her experience provides the rich soil from which this book has
grown. It is packed with insight, drawn from cutting-edge research, and is
squarely aimed at 21st century leaders seeking to build collaborative, self-
reflective teams.”
—David Gergen, senior political analyst, CNN; adviser to four U.S.
presidents; professor, public service, and director, Center for Public Leadership,
Harvard Kennedy School
“This book is both practical and profound. It takes us from the static
organizational models and procedures of the past to the skills and practices of a
knowledge economy, in which learning is the mainstay of success. Teaming is an
extraordinary concept, filled with inspiration and possibility. My admiration for
Amy Edmondson continues to grow with this contribution. This is a must-read
for those in pursuit of habitual excellence, joy, and meaning in work, and success
in the 21st century.”
—Julianne Morath, chief quality and patient safety officer, Vanderbilt
University Medical Center; and associate professor, clinical nursing, Vanderbilt
University

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