What is a summary of Chapter 5 of the fifth edition of Artistry, Choice, and Leadership?

Chapter 5: Organizing Groups and Teams.

This chapter opens with a detailed description of two real instances of teams working successfully together: the SEAL team that took out Osama bin Laden, and a medical team who performed a last-minute kidney transplant. These examples set the tone for the chapter and explain why a good organization for a group or team really matters. When a group performs well together, the authors assert, any individuals' talents are heightened. And when a group performs poorly, it can destroy any positive effects that individuals working alone may have had. 

The main idea of the chapter is then explained: that if you know how to restructure a group or team effectively, you can dramatically improve the performance of the group.

Next, the text offers options for organizing teams. The point is that how you organize the team should be relevant to the task they are responsible for, and you must take into consideration the group's goal(s) and any skills or talents that the individual members have. You might arrange a group with a single boss, multiple bosses, a simple hierarchy, a circle network (with each member reporting to others,) or an "all-channel network" in which each member reports to each other member.

After that, the authors discuss how different situations call for different relationships among members of teams and groups. In baseball, football, and basketball, the team members relate to each other in different ways for different reasons. Again, it's the goal and the situation that must determine how team members relate to one another.

The chapter starts to wrap up as the authors list characteristics of high-performing teams: Demands or opportunities shape the purpose of teams; teams set and achieve specific, measurable goals; teams are no larger than 25 people; team members are all committed to working together; and team members feel responsible for meeting their goals.

The chapter concludes with a brief exploration of why self-managed teams may be a good idea in some situations but not others. Although they can be very effective and can build morale among team members, it can be difficult to get these groups started and to identify the resources they need to accomplish their goals. The authors discuss some examples from the world of business (Saturn and General Motors) to illustrate these concepts.