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BOOKS
Recreating the Workplace
You've probably heard that your people are your only true competitive advantage. But it's extremely difficult to translate this concept into business reality. With an innovative, proven approach called the "Transformation Pathway," Steven Rayner shows companies how to continuously improve performance by creating a High Performance Work System.
Used in companies across North America and Europe, the six-phase Transformation Pathway helps companies recognize, overcome, and "manage through" the most difficult aspects of the transition to high performance. The six phases-Leadership, Commitment, Communication, Redesign, Reinforcement, and Renewal-show how a traditional company can become a highly flexible, agile organization.
In each phase, Rayner focuses on critical success factors and common pitfalls. Throughout the book you'll encounter stories from trailblazing companies such as Corning, IBM Canada, Weyerhaeuser, Kodak, Monsanto, and Martin Marietta. Recreating the Workplace provides innovative, creative insights for managers, executives, and team members and gives invaluable advice on:
If your company faces unprecedented challenges and change, Recreating the Workplace will bring a new sense of "the possible" to your organization. From the first chapter to the last, it delivers a comprehensive approach that can help launch your organization into an upward spiral of high performance.
Team Traps: Survival Stories and Lessons from Team Disasters, Near-Misses, Mishaps, and Other Near-Death Experiences
"To create a high-performing team, leaders must be prepared for a long and difficult journey....At every step along the way there is the potential for the effort to become derailed and the team trapped in the organizational quicksand that surrounds it. For team leaders and team members alike, there are many hard lessons to learn."
---From the Introduction to Team Traps
It has been proven repeatedly that participative, team-based organizations are more productive, cost-efficient, and flexible; produce better quality goods and services; and develop more loyal and motivated employees than their traditionally managed counterparts. But not every team experiment is a resounding success-far from it. Even the most productive and successful teams can fall victim to internal and external pressures, mistakes, or misunderstandings that disrupt the project, damage the team, or even endanger the organization as a whole.
In this penetrating and entertaining book, consultant and team expert Steven R. Rayner recounts true stories of unforeseen team disasters that occurred in a wide variety of organizations. You'll meet the team leader whose management style was so hands-off, he virtually disappeared; the team zealot who lost his job after his team developed one of the most successful products in his company's history; the highly successful team that nearly drove its company into bankruptcy; and many more.
Each story is followed by analysis, advice, and recommendations based on Rayner's years of team experience, gained while working with some of the most progressive organizations across North America. Team members and leaders will find innovative, workable guidelines on how to "trap-proof" their teams.
Team Innovations: Best Practice Tools & Resources for Team-Based Management
Are you looking for ways to enhance the performance of your teams? Are you the manager who suddenly finds him/herself trying to make sense of team-based management? Are you overwhelmed at the sheer volume of information about teams and don't have a lot of time to sift through it all? Then Team Innovations: Best Practice Tools & Resources for Team-Based Management is for you.
Rayner & Associates teamed up with People Management Resources to create a best practices guide for team-based management systems. The guide contains in-depth case studies from twelve organizations who have successfully implemented teams. Each case presents the organization's successes, failures, critical milestones reached, lessons learned, and examples of tools used by its teams. A profile of the organization's change champions, the rationale for moving to teams, an indicator of its teams' operating maturity, and documentation of results achieved are also included.
Team Innovations contains a wealth of information and useful tools from organizations successfully using teams. It is organized to allow you to quickly find what you are looking for.
1. Case Studies. Detailed case studies about actual teams, including examples of team books, charters, position descriptions, organization charts, team demographics. Organizations profiled include:
2. Team Innovations. Unique and successful approaches to common team-based issues, including:
3. Team Assessment Tool and Development Planning Guide. A proven tool to help assess your teams and plan ways to improve their performance. Each assessment area includes development recommendations to use with your team.
Tips for Teams
Smooth and successful teamwork doesn't happen overnight. Whether you're a team leader or member, you can expect plenty of growing pains and rough spots. Tips for Teams contains practical, proven ideas to help you address such crucial questions as:
In Tips for Teams, you'll find help for these and more than 100 other challenges typically faced within and between teams. All of the guidance is drawn from real-life team experiences in both small and large organizations, including companies such as Corning, Apple Computers, AT&T, and Kodak.