The Journey to Teams: The New Approach to Achieve Breakthrough Business Performance

I'm an internal consultant at Fiskars, Inc. For the past two years I've been reviewing books about how to implement teams, but everything I read contained the same old traditional ideas that haven't worked for us (i.e. give employees some basic skills training, then ask them to take turns doing various supervisory functions). The Journey To Teams is a completely different approach. The most important point is that most supervisors do too much of the thinking for their subordinates, which causes them to turn off their brains while at work, which in turn frustrates everything management does to create teams. I gave copies of this book to several shop-floor supervisors in our Alabama plant and they came back all excited saying that the author must be sitting around the corner watching us, because the book describes exactly the problems we've had implementing teams at our plant. I've started reading this book for the second time now, and I'm taking lots of notes. If you want to implement teams, you've got to read this book.

This book is easily readable by everyone at every level of the organization. That said, I've read it nine times and each time I learned something new. Don't expect any of the traditional team-building stuff that treats teams as the objective. This book treats teams as a means to real objectives - more capable people, producing better business results. The most important concept in the book is called "the bridge of confidence", a technique for building trust and confidence between supervisors and employees, allowing supervisors to let go of control gradually without losing control.We bought a copy of this book for each of the 450 employees at Cape Canaveral Group (we maintain the launch pads and related facilities for Atlas, Titan, and Delta rockets). If you are implementing teams, this book is a "must read."

This book is easily readable by everyone at every level of the organization. That said, I've read it nine times and each time I learned something new. Don't expect any of the traditional team-building stuff that treats teams as the objective. This book treats teams as a means to real objectives - more capable people, producing better business results. The most important concept in the book is called "the bridge of confidence", a technique for building trust and confidence between supervisors and employees, allowing supervisors to let go of control gradually, without losing control.We bought a copy of this book for each of the 450 employees at Cape Canaveral Group (we maintain the launch pads and related facilities for Atlas, Titan, and Delta rockets) and contracted with Everest Consulting Group (Regan's company) to help us implement our teams. If you are implementing teams, this book is a "must read."

This book effectively argues that unless you transform your supervisors from babysitters into coaches, they will negate all the team training you give your employees. It gives very specific coaching techniques that help both employees and supervisors overcome the initial fears of trusting each other. Michael Regan's methods for getting people to develop ideas and take responsibility for implementing them are excellent. His chapters on how to set up and measure teams so they share ownership and accountability for results are critical for anyone who wants to set up a team organization.I successfully implemented teams at Alcatel before I read this book, but only after four years of dead ends and wrong turns - a result of reading traditional team books and using traditional team consultants. This book would have saved us a couple of years. Subsequently, I used it as our team implementation road map when I was hired as Director of Manufacturing at Sumitomo Electric Lightwave. Within two years we were making record profits, and I was promoted to VP of Manufacturing. I recently accepted a position as Director of Operations at another organization, with responsibility for three plants and a distribution center. The Journey To Teams will be required reading for all my managers.