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Many corporations, in their attempt to create
innovative products and services, have focused on the concept
of building teams. While many groups fizzle, on rare occasions
the members of a group will experience an extraordinary
eruption of excitement, transcending an organization's rigid
confines to achieve astonishing results. These individuals,
say Jean Lipman-Blumen and Harold J. Leavitt, are lucky
enough to be members of a "hot group," a phenomenon
they lucidly and enthusiastically describe in their groundbreaking
new book Hot Groups.
A hot group is not a name for a new-fangled
team, task force, or committee. Rather, a hot group is defined
by a distinctive state of mind coupled with a style of behavior
that is intense and sharply focused on its ultimate goal.
Stretching themselves beyond their own expectations, members
of a hot group plunge into enterprises that have the potential
to change, even ennoble, their own and others' lives.
Neither trendy fabrication nor new management
fad, hot groups have existed since the dawn of civilization,
perhaps invigorating groups of cavemen to hunt together
furiously for food before winter's approach. Today, examples
of hot groups abound in territories such as Silicon Valley,
where impassioned people have blazed paths through the burgeoning
computer industry. Consider the hot group that created the
original Macintosh and revolutionized the personal computer
market. John Sculley, who joined Apple in the early 1980s,
described a "magnetic field" that surrounded the
Macintosh hot group members, and Bill Gates, Microsoft's
mastermind, reported that a hot programming group to which
he once belonged "didn't obey a 24-hour clock."
Instead, they programmed for days at a time, pausing only
to eat and talk about software with fellow programmers.
Here also are examples of hot groups at work in other industries:
the individuals that created the blockbuster TV drama "Hill
Street Blues"; the Navy and civilian personnel that
transformed a standard cruiser into a guided missile cruiser
in less than 12 months; and even the ad hoc crisis management
group advising President John F. Kennedy during the Cuban
missile crisis. Indeed, the inspiring case studies found
throughout Hot Groups illustrate that well-nourished
hot groups can profoundly transform any type of organization.
Still, Lipman-Blumen and Leavitt recognize
the risks inherent in loosening an organization's structural
soil enough to accommodate these groups. Consequently, they
address such issues as how to provide the kind of leadership
required by a hot group, how to mesh a hot group with the
regimented structure of the overall corporation, how managers
can encourage new hot groups, and how best to cope with
an overheated hot group.
Drawing on decades of research and experience
with groups and organizations throughout the world, Lipman-Blumen
and Leavitt have written an intensely engaging book about
a phenomenon that will become increasingly important in
our rapidly changing world. Expertly carving a path through
this unmapped terrain, they lucidly demonstrate how managers
and executives can ignite hot group sparks in their own
organizations.
Jean Lipman-Blumen works in the fields
of management, leadership, and gender issues in organizations.
Her research on the leadership behavior of male and female
executives resulted in her book, The Connective Edge:
Leading in an Interdependent World (1996). She was president
of LBS International, Ltd., a management consulting and
public policy research firm, and has consulted for various
governments and private sector organizations. She is Thornton
F. Bradshaw Professor of Public Policy and Professor of
Organization Behavior at the Peter F. Drucker Graduate School
of Management at the Claremont Graduate University.
Harold J. Leavitt has been studying the
way that small groups work since his graduate school days
in Psychology at MIT. He has written widely on the subject
and has made major contributions to the field of Organization
Development. He gained first-hand experience in the inner
workings of teams in his consulting for Bell Telephone Laboratories,
Varian Associates, Singapore Airlines, and the Ford Foundation.
His textbook, Managerial Psychology,
is in its fifth edition and has sold half a million copies.
He is Kilpatrick Professor of Organizational Behavior and
Psychology, Emeritus, Graduate School of Business, Stanford
University. The authors are married.
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