Team Genius

Team leadership is the number one skill most doctors list in pre-consulting surveys when asked what they would like for me to help them improve about their practice. A quick search on Amazon reveals over 191,755 results for the term “leadership.” Every year at professional meetings, there are leadership development panels and guru after guru trotting out their latest advancements in the field of leadership.  In a sea of information about leadership, where is the serious doctor to turn? Look no further than Rich Karlgaard and Michael Malone’s book Team Genius. These authors, business strategists, and educational leaders have produced one of the best-researched books on team formation, dynamics, management and leadership to date. Karlgaard is the editor of Forbes Magazine and Malone is one of the world’s leading authorities on technology in business.  Malone has written twenty books alone on the subject of technology.  This duo is a powerhouse and the information you will learn about team dynamics and what it takes to create and manage high-producing teams is more than you might obtain in a semester of MBA school.

Team Genius offers more than anecdotal evidence and goes in depth to reveal the scientific studies and reliable case studies that illustrate key areas of team development that, most likely, you have never considered. As doctors, our ability to hire and formulate the right sized team for the right job is critical to our ability to serve our patients.  What most of us don’t consider is the fact that many teams are mismatched to achieve their goals even if the team has great chemistry. We are mismatched in diversity and stability in order to produce results for our practices and almost none of us know the appropriate time to “shut down” or reformulate a team.

Karlgaard and Malone review with practical strategy how to properly reward your teams, how to determine the appropriate number of people in each team, and what to do with underperforming teams quickly to turn them into high performing teams. With so much on the line when it comes to your team, you can’t afford not to read this book.  For less than the cost of a pizza, you can enjoy some mental nutrition that promises to help you build stronger teams in your practice. I recommend going through this book with your team leaders, office managers and associate doctors. Set a goal to review the book in three sections throughout the next quarter and make it a habit to test at least three major recommendations from the research in the book so that you might enjoy the benefits of a more productive team.