Teaming: How Organizations Learn, Innovate, and Compete in the Knowledge Economy Hardcover - 2012 - 1st Edition

In the knowledge economy, teams are the principle means by which work gets done and organizational value is created. In this groundbreaking book, Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson draws on her 20 years of research on teams in a variety of organizational settings to show how and why organizational success or failure is dependent on a team's ability to "team"--to learn and adapt to their environment and to each other.

Using illustrative examples from such leading organizations as Intermountain Healthcare, Prudential, Toyota, IDEO, the IRS, and both Cincinnati and Minneapolis Children's Hospitals, the author describes the basic teaming activities and conditions that determine how work gets done, how leaders help make it happen, and how a safe interpersonal environment frees up people to focus on innovation. Throughout the book, Edmondson's guidelines offer a supportive framework for understanding and responding to the dynamics of collective learning. Designed as a practical resource, the book is filled with ideas, solutions, and strategies appropriate for all types and sizes of organizations.

Teaming is broken into three parts so that leaders and practitioners can easily find topics and identify the core activities that fuel teaming efforts. Part One answers basic questions about teaming, such as: How does it work? What does it take for people to learn how to team? What do people do when teaming? How does teaming produce organizational learning? Part Two looks at four leadership actions that enable teaming and learning, providing an up-close look at how people work together in a wide variety of organizational contexts. Part Three shows how to implement teaming on an organizational level and offers three case studies that examine different potential learning outcomes, including process improvement, problem solving, and innovation.

Teaming shows how any organization can figure out how to learn in order to remain competitive and relevant in today's complex and global organizational landscape.