Teaming

Amy C. Edmondson is the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School, where she teaches courses in leadership, organizational learning, and operations management in the MBA and Executive Education programs.

• Foreword by Edgar H. Schein xiIntroduction 1part one teaming1 A New Way of Working 11Teaming Is a Verb 12Organizing to Execute 15The Learning Imperative 19Learning to Team, Teaming to Learn 24Organizing to Learn 26Execution-as-Learning 30The Process Knowledge Spectrum 32A New Way of Leading 38Leadership Summary 42Lessons and Actions 422 Teaming to Learn, Innovate, and Compete 45The Teaming Process 50Four Pillars of Effective Teaming 51The Benefits of Teaming 56Social and Cognitive Barriers to Teaming 60When Conflict Heats Up 67Leadership Actions That Promote Teaming 75Leadership Summary 78Lessons and Actions 79part two organizing to learn3 The Power of Framing 83Cognitive Frames 84Framing a Change Project 89The Leader’s Role 93Team Members’ Roles 96The Project Purpose 99A Learning Frame Versus an Execution Frame 102Changing Frames 104Leadership Summary 111Lessons and Actions 1124 Making It Safe to Team 115Trust and Respect 118Psychological Safety for Teaming and Learning 125The Effect of Hierarchy on Psychological Safety 131Cultivating Psychological Safety 135Leadership Summary 145Lessons and Actions 1465 Failing Better to Succeed Faster 149The Inevitability of Failure 150The Importance of Small Failures 151Why It’s Difficult to Learn from Failure 154Failure across the Process Knowledge Spectrum 160Matching Failure Cause and Context 164Developing a Learning Approach to Failure 168Strategies for Learning from Failures 170Leadership Summary 182Lessons and Actions 1836 Teaming Across Boundaries 185Teaming Despite Boundaries 191Visible and Invisible Boundaries 193Three Types of Boundaries 197Teaming Across Common Boundaries 201Leading Communication across Boundaries 212Leadership Summary 215Lessons and Actions 216part three execution-as-learning7 Putting Teaming and Learning to Work 221Execution-as-Learning 222Using the Process Knowledge Spectrum 229Facing a Shifting Context at Telco 234Learning That Never Ends 240Keeping Learning Alive 252Leadership Summary 254Lessons and Actions 2568 Leadership Makes It Happen 257Leading Teaming in Routine Production at Simmons 258Leading Teaming in Complex Operations at Children’s Hospital 265Leading Teaming for Innovation at IDEO 276Leadership Summary 283Moving Forward 285Notes 289Acknowledgments 309About the Author 313Index 315