The days of a lone genius pioneering world-changing ideas are behind us (the so-called Great Man theory); most new discoveries today come from working in teams. Therefore, fostering healthy collaborative environments and attracting top-line colleagues have become essential skills for today’s organizational leaders. That topic is worthy of a deep dive. In this book, Authors Warren Bennis and Patricia Ward Biederman combine to look at several use cases to extract key principles of what make successful creative collaborations work.
This book looks at large, pioneering projects that required organizing teams of really smart people – herding cats, as they say. The groups maintained an intense group identity around a common purpose. The sense of individuality melted as they became committed to a collective mission. Of course, they delivered on their tasks and had the time of their lives doing it, even if it were just for a temporary timespan.
Projects include such diverse stories as making films for Walt Disney, the Manhattan Project to invent the atomic bomb, Lockhead Martin’s super-secret Skunk Works, and the 1992 Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign. Some of those stories, by now, have been rehashed in the public consciousness, but many were new to me. Either way, all are well-written with details that I had not heard before.
Many books contain stories about organizing teams, and most of them are good. This book is simply one of the very best at that aim. It highlights, in particular, the leadership skills required to bring about ginormous results from super-smart teams. Attracting talent and extracting results remain central challenges of management. This book addresses those topics in a unique, engaging way and deserves to be read towards those ends.
Organizing Genius: The Secrets of Creative Collaboration
By Warren Bennis & Patricia Ward Biederman
Copyright (c) 1997
Addison-Wesley Publishing Company
ISBN13 9780201570519
Page Count: 239
Genre: Leadership, Collaboration
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