Superteams: The Secrets of Great Teamwork

Great teams rarely happen by accident; they happen by design. And that design is rooted in the motivational and strategic bonds that tie them together. But what makes true cohesion? How do you create the right combination of skills in team members? Does information flow between them in a fluent way? Are their actions harmoniously coordinated? In a journey to understand 'Superteams', this book takes us into the killing fields of Iraq after the 2003 invasion, the flourishing of knowledge in Renaissance Italy, the Death Zone at the summit of Mount Everest, a nuclear submarine patrolling the world's oceans, a rugby team dressed all in black, the high-tech industries of Silicon Valley, and in to the Manchester United dressing room during the reign of Sir Alex Ferguson. Drawing from the latest research in psychology, systems theory, economics, and neuroscience, Matthew Syed, the No.1 bestselling author of Black Box Thinking, shows how environments can be consciously engineered for teams to gel. And how, in high performing teams, the knowledge, ideas and information used by different individuals can yield successes far beyond the strategic skill or performance of any single member. In our increasingly complex world we all need to learn how to maximize our collective potential - across industry, the military, technology, business, politics, sport and academia - and turn our teams in to "Superteams".