Credit Richard Luecke with pulling together a wealth of information and counsel from various sources. He is also the author of several other books in the Essentials series. In this instance, he was assisted by a subject advisor, Jeff Polzer, who is an Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior at Harvard Business School. Together, they have carefully organized the material as follows.
Note the sequence of subjects addressed. Luecke and Polzer offer a step-by-step process that is cohesive, comprehensive, and cost-effective. Throughout their narrative, they provide an abundance of observations, suggestions, caveats, strategies, tactics, and checklists that really do comprise “the complete skill set to build powerful and influential teams.” Then in the three appendices, they provide useful implementation tools, a guide to effective coaching, and a “Troubleshooting Guide” because any human enterprise–especially one which requires effective cooperation, collaboration, and communication–is certain to encounter all manner of problems, especially when those initiatives challenge what Jim O’Toole has characterized as “the ideology of comfort and the tyranny of custom.”
This book will be most valuable to decision-makers in those organizations (regardless of size or nature) that are either planning to respond to opportunities as well as problems by creating “a team with an edge,” or, are now thinking about doing so. No other single volume can be of greater assistance to those decision-makers, whatever their current circumstances may be. That said, it would be foolish to depend entirely on a single source for guidance, albeit one as insightful and practical as this one is. Rigorous, sometimes painful soul-searching must first be completed. In a perfect world, everyone in a given organization cooperates, collaborates, and communicates effectively. In reality, that is true of very few organizations. For all others, a team can be created and then generously supported whose mission is to solve a given problem or exploit an opportunity but one that, in process, also demonstrates how to complete any other mission with effective cooperation, collaboration, and communication.
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