In today’s complex, fast-evolving world, success requires people with diverse know-how to work together dynamically. That’s what Teaming by Amy Edmondson is all about—teaming is a dynamic activity where people come together on the fly to tackle challenges, learn, and innovate. This book outlines key practices for building agile, learning-driven, and effective teams that excel in the face of uncertainty. 🚀
In this free Teaming summary, you’ll learn the core elements of teaming, strategies for fluid collaboration within an organization, and how to cultivate continuous organizational learning.
What is Teaming?
Teaming is a dynamic activity where interdependent people come together to solve problems, learn, and innovate. It requires flexible teamwork and the ability to coordinate units of action seamlessly.
Teaming is a verb (not a noun) because it’s an active, ongoing process. This is a different approach from traditional teams which are treated as static entities with pre-defined roles.
Drawing from decades of research across different industries, Harvard professor Amy Edmondson shares her framework for creating adaptive, learning-focused workplaces. The insights in this book are useful for leaders, managers, and professionals who wish to improve team effectiveness and collaboration.
In this free version of the Teaming summary, we’ll briefly outline:
- Teaming and its core elements
- How to facilitate teaming through 4 leadership actions (Organizing-to-Learn)
- How to learn continuously as an organization (Execution-as-Learning).
For a breakdown of the steps, practical tips, and examples, do check out complete 18-page book summary with text, graphic, and audio formats.
Why Teaming Matters?
In the industrial era, companies like General Motors (GM) relied on a top-down management style focused on creating stable team structures and efficient production processes. While this worked back then, it doesn’t fit the knowledge economy characterized by complex systems. For example, in healthcare, teams are often formed and dissolved quickly to meet specific demands.
What are the Benefits of Teaming?
The benefits of teaming include:
- Improved Performance:
- Teams bring diverse insights that result in better products, cost savings, quicker responses to changes, etc.
- It makes organizations more flexible, innovative, and competitive.
- Better Work Environment:
- Collaboration creates a shared sense of purpose that boosts employee satisfaction and commitment.
- It also makes work more engaging and meaningful by exposing employees to diverse knowledge and skills.
The Process Knowledge Spectrum
Despite its advantages, teaming isn’t required in all situations. The Process Knowledge Spectrum (PKS) is a useful framework that clarifies the appropriate focus and approach for a task, based on the level of uncertainty and maturity of the knowledge required.
By understanding where each task or situation falls on this spectrum, you can identify the type of learning and execution required:
- Routine operations involve predictable tasks and clear, standardized steps (e.g. assembly lines or fast-food service).
- Complex operations involve a mix of stable processes (e.g. routine medical procedures) and uncertain processes (e.g. patient arrival times or treatments for rare diseases).
- Innovation operations (emerging knowledge, high uncertainty) involve new solutions without predefined internal processes. Success relies on experimentation and collaboration among flexible, diverse teams with high levels of teaming.
In our complete summary, we explain how the PKS can be used along with the teaming process, leadership actions and in developing a learning culture.
The Teaming Process
Teaming isn’t about having a stable team composition, but building mindsets and practices of teamwork that help people to collaborate effectively. When teaming is implemented successfully, it creates synergy: team members openly share ideas, support one another, and work together toward a common goal.
Encouraging the 4 Core Behaviors
There are four core behaviors that leaders must demonstrate to successfully implement teaming. Each cycle builds on the last, creating knowledge for continuous improvement.
- Speak up by asking questions, discussing mistakes or potential issues, sharing ideas or feedback, and seeking help.
- Collaborate effectively toward common goals by sharing information, coordinating tasks, and being open to feedback.
- Experiment with new ideas and approaches, learn from mistakes, and use the insights from both successes and failures to adapt and improve over time.
- Regularly reflect on your actions and progress to learn and improve.
Addressing Barriers
The teaming process also involves addressing social and cognitive barriers that can get in the way. Leaders need to address these challenges head-on. In our full summary, we explore these barriers and offer strategies to overcome them. We also provide tips on managing and resolving conflicts effectively when tensions arise.
Organizing to Learn
Aside from managing conflict, leaders must also provide the right context and environment for effective teaming. The first step is to create a supportive environment that encourages teaming behaviors. Edmondson calls this “organizing to learn.”
• Adopt a learning frame: Help team members view changes and new initiatives constructively by framing them as opportunities for growth. Leaders should position themselves as interdependent team members. In our full Teaming summary, we dive into practical steps and tips on how to implement this mindset.
• Build psychological safety: Psychological safety is the the perception of being able to take risks (e.g., sharing ideas or speaking up) without fear. It’s essential for open communication and constructive feedback. It is rooted in mutual trust and respect and requires deliberate, actionable steps from leaders—not just words. Check out our complete 18-page summary for a breakdown of the strategiesto nurture psychological safety within teams.
• Learn from failures: Minor or complex failures are normal and unavoidable in uncertain, diverse environments. What matters is the ability to learn from them. More tips in the full summary on how to handle different types of failures and encourage a learning-focused approach to failure.
• Encourage collaboration across boundaries: Boundaries can hinder teamwork, regardless of whether they’re visible (e.g., gender) or invisible (e.g., assumptions). Common barriers in global teaming include: physical, status, and knowledge boundaries, and we address specific strategies to bridge these boundaries in our full Teaming summary.
Execution as Learning
To complement a supportive environment for teaming, organizations must embed continuous learning into daily operations.
Execution-as-Learning is a dynamic approach where teams learn, adapt, innovate, and improve in real-time, integrating action and reflection into everyday work. Unlike traditional after-action reviews, this method emphasizes real-time adjustments and iterative improvement.
It involves four iterative steps:
- Diagnose the situation, and identify potential issues and knowledge gaps.
- Design a plan to address the issues identified, including experiments to test new approaches.
- Act on the plan, treating the process as a learning experience.
- Reflect on the outcomes, make adjustments, and incorporate insights into the next cycle of learning/improvement.
How these steps are applied depends on where the task falls on the Process Knowledge Spectrum. In our full summary, we will guide you on how to perform this process based on where you are in the PKS, with examples from real-life scenarios.
Getting the Most From Teaming
Once teaming and continuous learning are deeply ingrained in organizational culture, they drive employee engagement and sustained innovation, helping organizations adapt to an ever-changing environment.
If you’re ready to incorporate teaming into your organization, check out our full summary for a complete guide on how to do it from the ground up. We cover all the practical management strategies for implementing teaming as well as several examples illustrating how successful organizations were able to apply it. Our full book summary bundle includes an infographic, a 18-page text summary, and a 26-minute audio summary.
Beyond the strategies we covered, the book includes many other case studies from various industries—from space shuttle missions to hospitals, mattresses, and tech companies, to illustrate the concept, application, and impact of teaming. You can purchase the book here or visit the Harvard Business School website.
Interested in learning more about leadership, management, and organizational development? Check out our summaries for: Overcoming the Five Dysfunctions of a Team (to understand the components of creating strong, collaborative teams), and Team of Teams to learn to adapt through flexible, empowered teams. You might also enjoy The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook on building a learning organization.
About the Author of Teaming
Teaming: How Organizations Learn, Innovate, and Compete in the Knowledge Economy was written by Amy C. Edmondson. She is an American scholar, author, and the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at Harvard Business School. She was previously a Director of Research at Pecos River Learning Centers and a Chief Engineer for Buckminster Fuller. She has authored 7 books, over 75 articles and case studies, and won several awards.
Edmondson received her PhD in organizational behavior, AM in psychology, and AB in engineering and design from Harvard University. She has been recognized by the Thinkers50 global ranking of management thinkers since 2011, achieving the top position in 2023.
Teaming Quotes
“By now, everyone knows that organizations need to learn—to thrive in a world of continuous change. But how organizations learn is not as well understood.”
“Teaming is the engine of organizational learning.”
“Good teams…display synergy. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The players understand that they succeed or fail together—they win or lose as a team.”
“In a conflict, most people have a tacit goal of winning… rather than a problem to be understood and solved.”
“A given project, or any collaborative work, can be framed as a learning opportunity or as mere execution.”
“Acknowledging uncertainty may seem like a weakness, but in fact, it’s usually an intelligent and accurate diagnosis of a murky situation.”
“To innovate, people must test ideas without knowing in advance what will work.”
“A design is simply a statement of what a team will do—or, more precisely, what it will try—to achieve a goal.”
Click here to download the Teaming infographic & summary
