Breakthrough teams and how they can remake a company is the subect of Adrian Gostick and Chester Elton's latest book, The Orange Revolution: How One Great Team Can Transform an Entire Organization (Simon & Schuster 2010). What's more, they will be presenting, for the first time in public, the data that went into the new book during the free, live HSM webinar on November 3 entitled appropriately enough, The Orange Revolution. (Why "orange" and not, say "purple"? Orange is the color of carrots, and Gostick and Elton's best-seller was The Carrot Principle: How the Best Mangers Use Recognition to Engage Their Employees, Retain Talent, and Drive Performance. The Orange Revolution is the logical next step from recognition management.)
To write the new book, the authors surveyed over 350,000 people at some of the leading companies. The November 3 webinar will reveal what the authors discovered about the characteristics of breakthrough teams. In a recent Business Week article excerpting the book, the authors explain that while breakthrough teams "always include competent people, most are not comprised of a preponderance of people with remarkable intelligence or unique expertise. They are not so-called Dream Teams." The authors realized that "world-class results come only partly from who makes up these teams, but more importantly what these teams do." All told, The Orange Revolution identifies six core traits that the authors consistently found at companies with breakthrough teams:
- big dreams and ambitious goals;
- belief in in each other
- belief in what the team can accomplish together;
- take calculated risks while closely measuring results;
- perseverence despite problems or conflicts that arise; and
- they have a "charming habit of Telling Stories" exemplifying what they are trying to achieve.
That last one that makes you stop and think. What are they talking about? Well, anyone who has worked in such an organization can attest to the importance of the story, as it makes every team member a part of the evolving company narrative and history. And that's what makes a team breakthrough in every sense of the word.
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