Committed Teams: Three Steps To Inspiring Passion And Performance

Build high-performing teams with an evidence-based framework that delivers results

Committed is a practical handbook for building great teams. Based on research from Wharton’s Executive Development Program (EDP), this concise guide identifies the common challenges that arise when people work together as a group and provides key guidance on breaking through the barriers to peak performance. Committed draws its insights from the EDP’s living lab: an intensive two-week simulation during which executive-level participants run complex global businesses. The authors have observed over 100 teams collaborating and competing for over 100 combined years in this intense environment. It has yielded fundamental insights about teamwork: what usually goes wrong, what frequently goes right, and the methods and techniques that will help you access your team’s full potential. These insights have been distilled into a simple, repeatable process that you can start applying today.

Getting teams engaged and aligned is hard. Committed will give you the tools you need to deal with all of the familiar teamwork challenges that get in the way: organizational politics, delegation, coordination, and aligning skills and motivation. Using vivid stories and examples from the worlds of business, sports, and non-profits, it will teach you how to:

• Understand the dynamics of successful teams
• Achieve peak performance using a research-backed methodology
• Gain expert insight into why most teams underperform
• Learn the critical points common to all great teams

Committed gives you the perspective you need to combine the right people with the right way of collaborating to achieve extraordinary results.

Mario Moussa (www.moussaconsulting.com) teaches in the Executive Programs at Wharton School of Executive Education. He also advises senior leaders at the world's top companies and organizations. He has delivered keynotes and workshops for executives in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Istanbul, Sao Paolo, Delhi, Mumbai and Paris, and throughout the U.S. A widely published author and public speaker, Dr. Moussa co-wrote (with G. Richard Shell) The Art of Woo: Using Strategic Persuasion to Sell Your Ideas. His work has been featured on NPR and in print publications such as Time Magazine, Business Week, U.S. News and World Report, The Harvard Management Update, and The Financial Times.

Derek Newberry is a Lecturer at the Wharton School of Business and teaches in its Executive Programs. As a business anthropologist, he advises corporate leaders on the human factors that drive organizational effectiveness. Derek has worked with organizations in a wide-range of industries, including energy, banking, management consulting, and healthcare.. He has published extensively and lectured internationally on cultural barriers to organizational change, including speaking engagements at the World Bank, Copenhagen Business School, Stanford University, and the University of Sao Paulo. He received his Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania.

Madeline Boyer is a Senior Consultant with Percipient Partners and a Lecturer at the Wharton School of Business. She is also a business anthropologist whose research and teaching focuses on new workplace phenomena, such as shared and collaborative workspaces and geographically dispersed teams. Fluent in Spanish and English, she was born and raised in the Panama Canal Zone and is keenly aware of cross-cultural management issues. She has worked with a wide range of clients, including leading health and research institutions, non-profits, Fortune 500 companies, and Wharton Executive Education. Her specialties include stakeholder research, change management, strategic planning, executive development and teamwork. She has lectured internationally on coworking, the global shared workspace movement, and online community dynamics.