Organizing Genius: The Secrets Of Creative Collaboration

Organizing Genius: The Secrets Of Creative Collaboration

Offers a look at some of the world's most successful collaborations, such as the Manhattan Project and the 1992 Clinton campaign, while discussing how a motivational collaboration will cause others to join and pool their talents in order to achieve that same kind of success. 75,000 first printing. $75,000 ad/promo. For years, Warren Bennis has written about leadership in works such as Learning to Lead, Beyond Leadership, and the bestselling On Becoming a Leader. His aim in these well-received titles was to catalog the traits and styles of leadership that help individuals excel in their work. In his new book (and already another bestseller) Organizing Genius , Bennis declares the age of the empowered individual ended: what matters now is "collaborative advantage" and the assembling of powerful teams. Drawing from six case studies that include Xerox's PARC labs, the 1992 Clinton campaign, and Disney animation studios, Bennis and coauthor Patricia Biederman distill the characteristics of successful collaboration, showing how talent can be pooled and managed for greater results than any individual is capable of producing. Organized in easily digested chapters and written in clear, concise prose, Organizing Genius will be useful to folks finding their way in new organizational structures. The lessons Bennis and Biederman offer in the final chapter of the book don't constitute the obvious advice most business books convey; these are real experiences gleaned from the stories of collaboration they surveyed. To determine the characteristics of creative groups, Bennis (business administration, Univ. of Southern California) and Biederman, a Los Angeles Times reporter, here consider Disney Productions, PARC-r&d for Xerox, President Clinton's presidential campaign, Lockheed's Skunk Works, Black Mountain College, and the Manhattan Project. The authors conclude that creative groups usually operate in dull or tacky surroundings, are young and optimistic past the point of realism ("Great groups believe they're on a mission from God against a big, bad enemy"), are poorly paid, and go unrecognized. In these examples, many of the leaders were difficult to verbally abusive. The authors warn that it is possible for great minds to work in groups to accomplish great evil, and care must be taken to scrutinize the intended results. Sexual references are included that do not add to the story and are in poor taste. The authors acknowledge the noticeable absence of female participants in creative groups but do not give an adequate explanation. While interesting, this is not a necessary purchase.?Peggy D. Odom, Texas Lib. Assn., Waco Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. Warren Bennis knows his audience. A well-respected business consultant, he instructs uncertain managers in the art of transforming themselves into leaders. Organizing Genius ... [is] aimed at people suddenly entrusted with a corporate project that involves getting people to work together creatively, a skill rarely imparted at B-school. Many of them, I suspect, will find the book extremely useful. -- The New York Times Book Review, Charles C. Mann