A little book on management teams

A Little Book On Management Teams

ISBN 978-91-8020-307-4

© 2021 Stefan Söderfjäll

Translation: Darren Packman

Graphic Design: Daniel Åberg/Åbergs stilus et forma

Cover:: Daniel Åberg/Åbergs stilus et forma

Coverpicture: ShutterStock/Rudall30

Introduction

This little book focuses on management teams. The kind of teams that lock themselves into a conference room a couple of times each month and, once they emerge, try to give the impression they have done something very important indeed. What happens before, during and after these meetings is, of course, not completely unimportant either. Otherwise the book you are holding right now would probably never have been written. But if you ask managers about how useful the time they spend in management team meetings is, the truth is that an alarmingly large number of them say it is anything but meaningful. Research seems to agree, reporting that a disturbingly large proportion of management teams function and perform significantly worse than expected, which is significant given the importance and influence (both good and bad) they have, or could have, in the organisations they operate in.

I have worked in various ways with team and leadership development throughout most of my professional life. I have conducted my own research, greedily consumed the research of others, run consulting companies, studied, written several books and read many, many more. I have lectured, blogged, penned debate articles, spent restless nights lying awake thinking, debated, offered tips and advice and practiced and participated in multiple forms of leadership and group dynamics. Over the years I have revised and nuanced many of my beliefs. But there is one conviction that has stood the test of time (and grown stronger over the years), and that is regarding the importance of effective management teams. The research devoted to studying these teams has produced a number of compelling reasons to hold on to this conviction. Just how well management teams function has, among other things, been proven to be of importance to an organisation’s financial performance, the quality of the goods and services it delivers and the well-being and work performance of the managers and staff it employs.

This book is, for these very reasons, my own attempt to give these important teams more tools to succeed. In its pages is a mixture of my own experiences and research into the subject. The fact that, as already mentioned, research suggests there is a huge development need in many management teams makes writing it feel more relevant than ever. It is my hope that after reading this book you’ll find something useful that you can apply to a management team you are part of in some way. As the title suggests this book is not designed to be an authoritative work on the subject. It has instead been written for those of you who do not normally have much spare time to read, and in such a way that hopefully ensures you get to the end of it. Or maybe even read it more than once if you find something in its pages that resonates with you.