What people say about Checkered Flag Teams: Driving Your Workplace Into the Winner's Circle
A Toolkit for Teams
In
today's increasingly complex business environment, "speed" has become
the mantra of successful organizations. The
ability to learn and adapt to changing conditions more quickly than the
competition is what separates the winners from the losers.
In their book, Checkered Flag Teams, Renée Merchant and Jo Ellen Roe
capture the centrality of speed in the modern business environment by creatively
building their presentation of team development around an auto racing theme.
The auto racing theme also provides an interesting juxtaposition by
demonstrating the importance of teamwork in a sport that to an outsider seems
more of an individual endeavor.
The
primary strength of the book is that it is based on a theoretically eloquent and
easy-to-understand model of teamwork. I
have never been overly fond of Tuckman's model of team development because it
focuses too heavily on the social dynamics of teams while ignoring the crucial
element of the tasks that the team was created to accomplish.
The authors' model of team development (presented on page 31), however,
corrects this weakness by providing a convincing case for the need to balance
task and process issues in team development.
The
more obvious strength of the book is that it provides a number of
"tools" for developing effective teams.
These team activities are indexed early in the book, so you can quickly
locate just the activity that you need. The
instructions and rationale for each activity are precise and easy to follow, so
that even novice team leaders should be able to employ them successfully. In addition, most of the team activities are fairly brief and
to the point which makes them perfect for teams on the move.
I
especially recommend the book for teams that are just getting started, as it
provides an excellent toolkit for getting teams off to good start.
Though it also provides a nice reference for team leaders in any field
who are working to develop their team facilitation skills or are just looking
for some creative new team building activities.
Steve
Long
Organizational
Development Consultant
Fab
17 Manufacturing
978.568.5754
For more information, contact us at:
Delta Systems 5621 Somerset Drive Brooklyn, Michigan 49230 renee@4deltasystems.com
Tel/Fax (517)592-5463
