Over the past year and a half my team has been working on ways to improve how we work. There are many aspects of this, and I am deliberately being vague with the high level. One part of this improvement goal is to transform into a high performance team. Turns out that isn’t just some buzz term. There really is a definition for it and proven ways to get there. Going into this process I had no idea! Kidding aside this renewed focus at improvement has had me fascinated.
One of the trainers who I am generally friendly with recommended to me several books to read to help better my understanding beyond the training classes and coaching I have gotten. The first one I read was “Teamwork Is an Individual Skill: Getting Your Work Done When Sharing Responsibility” by Christopher Avery. I thought it was a fascinating read. Much of it was common sense but still I found myself not doing much of what it suggests. It also made several points that were counter intuitive in todays business world but after reading the book and talking to others that I trust their judgment the concepts really made sense to me. Ever since finishing the book I have been trying to adopt the concepts for myself and in hopes that my team also adopts them. One major point of the book is i can’t expect the team to do what I want. I can only influence them by my own actions.
I read the book on my commute home from work. It was a good read and as much as it wasn’t as exciting as a novel I was very pleased I read it. So much so that I want to read more books like it to help in my quest to be a better manager and a better member of a team.
This wasn’t the first book I have read for this initiative but it is the first one I am blogging about. I am hoping to write some more posts about some additional books that i have found were extremely valuable.