Creating Teams with an Edge [antikvár]

IntroductionThe Apollo team put the first man on the moon. The first personal computersboth the Mac and the IBMwere the creations of small teams. Ford Motor Company was saved from serious decline around 1980 by Team Taurus, whose newly designed passenger car became the bestseller in North America.Teams are responsible for many of today's accomplishments. In the business world, they have become commonplace and even fashionableso much so that some people mistakenly believe that the team approach to attacking problems or opportunities is just another management fad. It's not. Team-based work is far from new and it's here to stay. For example, when the United States' rebellious Continental Congress decided that it needed to produce a declaration of its independence from Great Britain, it created a team to handle the job. That team included two future presidents: John Adams of Massachusetts and Thomas Jefferson, a young Virginian with word-smithing talents. Pennsylvania's Benjamin Franklin provided some editing. Years later, when then-President Thomas Jefferson wanted to understand the half-continent he had acquired from Napoleon through the Louisiana Purchase, he didn't assign the job to a single individual, to one of his government departments, or to a unit of the regular army. Instead he gave the chore to a thirty-two-man team he called the Corps of Discovery. How that task was sponsored, staffed, organized, and led provides a useful example of what teams in any endeavor need to be successful.As sponsor of the venture, Jefferson placed leadership in the hands of an army captain in whom he had substantial trust, a twenty-nine-