Teaming: How Organizations Learn, Innovate, and Compete in the Knowledge Economy 1st Edition

Amy Edmondson has been involved in serious team research for a long time and her books are worth reading. She tries to avoid her books to be too academic but they are well-grounded in academic team research. This makes them different from most team-focused books.In Teaming, Amy Edmondson focuses on the process of creating a team, which she refers to as teaming. Partly because of the assumption that in many contexts it is not feasible to create stable teams and hence the skill of relatively quickly forming a team because a key skill in these contexts.The book consists of three parts. Part one, called teaming, is the overview and general concepts of teaming and provides the introduction to the test of the book. Part 2, organizing to learn, covers how to provide an organizational context that makes it possible (easy?) for people to team... for teaming. Part 3, execution-as-learning, explores the traditional separation of execution vs learning and how they can become the same thing.The first part has two chapters which provide and overview and map to the rest of the book. Interesting concepts are, for example, the four pillars of teaming, (1) speaking up, (2) Collaboration, (3) Experimentation, and (4) Reflection. These chapters also emphasize the role of leadership in making teaming a success, which is an important theme in the book.The second part is the largest part and focuses on creating the context for teaming. The first chapter focuses on the importance of framing the work often needed by management and how different frames have a different impact on teaming. The second chapter of this part is the subject that Amy Edmondson is best known for... team psychological safety. It summarizes the history and research on this topic. I especially found the dispelling of common misconceptions quite clear and useful. The third chapter looks at creating an environment for experimentation and with that an environment that accepts failure as a way to improve. The last chapter explores different kind of boundaries in organizations and how they impact teaming.The third part introduces execution-as-learning which I felt was a key concept. Instead of the traditional view of considering learning to be a cost of execution, this concepts takes them together and focuses on learning while executing. They are not trade-offs or need to be done separately but they need to be done together as they complement each other. The part consists of two chapters and they are mostly different examples of teaming in different organizations.I enjoyed Amy Edmundson's Teaming. It was a refreshing look on teams and the process of making teams. It introduced a couple of different ways to look at teams and, of course, extensively covers the subject of team psychological safety, a concept that Amy known for. I would recommend this book to anyone involved in teams and building well working teams. 5 stars.

Received item on time and in excellent condition

A bit dryer than the other book I read by Amy Edmonson but still has some great takeaways. Reads a bit more like a textbook that compilation of stories so just be prepared.

This is a great book, with a wealth of ideas supported by research and qualitative and quantitative data sources in what otherwise many companies, especially technology companies, have taken for-granted - that of team work. In todays competitive business landscape, where companies have to rapidly innovate or die the slow death, that they rely on small autonomous teams instrumented with purpose and punctuated with reflective learning moments . Amy points out that be it routine, complex or innovative work, teaming doesn't come naturally, well not unless you were an athlete who took part in team sports - safe to say an unlikely arena for most knowledge workers in the high-tech industry. She brings clarity to the traditional leadership and management approaches of execution-as-efficiency vs. execution-to-learn a paradigm few companies have adopted across the organization. Its a great source for those focused on organizational change, specifically when it comes to adoption of Lean/Agile practices across all endeavors of work.

Professor Edmondson has taken years of observation and insight and brought to the workplace a new way to think about learning- through teamwork. Just like technology is changing the way business works, this new approach to teaming can deliver leverage far beyond the traditional positive effects of teaming; it builds on teaming by super-charging it with learning and ultimately creating a cycle that delivers more with each iteration.The highly pragmatic examples make it come to life and the comparisons of success vs. failure make it clear that more than anything, this is a learning paradigm. It applies to organizations of any size, shape or objective; in fact I can't think of an organization from the Boy Scouts to IBM that couldn't benefit from the insights in this book.Bill HewittPresident & CEO, Kalido

I could not put down the book at the first half reading it, reading every word. But I had to manage my life than just reading. It is a very valuable subject how to see the changes and challenges around us, so different from the past. And perhaps it is the reason why social media developed [so much] today and had less significance in the past even if technology would have existed at that time. The words teaming and social are important today in the sense of collaboration. It is an excellent analysis.

This book presents interesting concepts but would be a much better academic article than a book. Not enough substance and very repetitive. Wish I didn't buy it.

Bravo! This is a wonderful book for anyone who is interested changing organizations, or the world at large! I've been doing Organizational Development work and have stacks of stacks of books on the topic of change, leadershipship, organizational improvement etc. etc. Amy's book takes her many years of wonderful experience and points us in a clear direction for moving forward into a more complex era of organizational and planatary change. Teaming is just the starting point. It's really about learning as we seek to execute strategies in increasingly complex environments and times.What a pleasure to come across a "management" and/or"Business/Organizational" book that is not boring and insipid as about 95% of what is written in these categories usually is. Most highly recommended.