(Note: I live in Dallas, and I am old enough to remember Roger Staubach’s Super Bowl wins for the Cowboys. As a quarterback and team leader, he was something! And, he has been equally successful in building a thriving business in his post Cowboys days. So, in Dallas, when Roger Staubach, speaks, we all listen!).

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What’s the toughest challenge you’ve had to overcome?
I’ve always believed you have to have the right people in the right places, but the challenge is getting the right people in the right places working together.
From D Magazine’s Frontburner Blog: Dallas 500 Q&A: Roger Staubach, JLL

There it is, in a nice, simple sentence. “The challenge is getting the right people in the right places working together.”

Team building is a big deal. Why? Because there are so many poor-to-mediocre teams. And, in too many cases, these poor-to-mediocre teams have to interact with and collaborate with other poor-to-mediocre teams, thus spreading the mediocrity.

Not good!

Here’s the reality – good, effective, productive teams are crucial in today’s business arena. And, ineffective teams result in ineffective and unproductive and unprofitable business endeavors.

Though the “starting book” to read for successful teams in the excellent, now classic, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni, in the last year, I presented synopses of two books that would also be worth reading. The first, Wiser: Getting Beyond Groupthink to Make Groups Smarter by Cass R. Sunstein and Reid Hastie, kind of took the conversation started by the book The Wisdom of Crowds to the next level. It is a book about how to tap into and enhance the smarts available in a good team, and how to make groups smarter.

The second was Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World by General Stanley McChrystal, Tantum Collins, David Silverman, Chris Fussell. This book was profound in its insight that a good team is only a part of a team of teams, all of which have to be “working together” (to quote Mr. Staubach). (Note: my synopsis of this book is one of the most frequently purchased from our companion site, 15minutebusinessbooks.com).

So, if you want to tackle a challenge that is worthy of your best efforts, tackle this one:

“the challenge is getting the right people in the right places working together.”

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You can purchase my synopses of Wiser, and Team of Teams, and many other good and useful business books, at our companion site 15minutebusinessbooks.com. Each synopsis comes with my comprehensive, multi-page handout, plus the audio recording of my presentation from our monthly First Friday Book Synopsis in Dallas.