Managing Teams

The book I read to research this post was Managing Teams For Dummies by Marty Brounstein which is a very good book which I bought from kindle. A team as defined in this book is a group of worker from 4- 13 working towards a common goal. If you have less than 4 they tend to pull in their own directions and there is no cohesion. More than 13 and it gets bogged down in red tape. It is a fallacy that all the members have to be happy because at the end of the day some people aren't natural team players and what matters is they do a good job despite that. Everyone in the group should have a clearly defined role and know what they are doing. When you have meetings obviously if you are looking for a solution have a board and have a brainstorming and no idea no matter how daft should be ridiculed. The aim is to come up with as many ideas as possible. Later you look at their feasibility. Look at the idea of retina display for things like iPads, that must have seemed a pretty dumb idea when first suggested yet now it is a feature and very popular. Any meeting should be structured and have definite goals as to what you want from it. You should make sure every member contributes and if you have someone who is dominating the meeting you shouldn't say something like I think you've said enough for one meeting as that is limiting their contribution which might be important. You can say something like x speak and I'll come back to you in a minute. Obviously everything the group does should be for the good of the group not the individual and the selfish members need to be told off. I did enjoy reading this book and I think it is quite an interesting subject. There isn't a huge amount of information in the book and I think it is probably of most interest to managers.