HBR Guide to Project Management

HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW

The Discipline of Teams

A summary of the full-length article, with lists of key ideas and company examples.

The Idea in Brief

The word team gets bandied about so loosely that many managers are oblivious to its real meaning—or its true potential. With a run-of-the-mill working group, performance is a function of what the members do as individuals. A team’s performance, by contrast, calls for both individual and mutual accountability.

Though it may not seem like anything special, mutual accountability can lead to astonishing results. It enables a team to achieve performance levels that are far greater than the individual bests of the team’s members. To achieve these benefits, team members must do more than listen, respond ...