X-Teams: How to Build Teams that Lead, Innovate, and Succeed

"Good teams fail all the time, and it’s not because they are inadequate or lack the talent or knowledge to do the job. It’s because they follow the classic team approach of focusing internally."
--Deborah Ancona, Associations Now, June 2007

In today's hyper-competitive business environment success and perhaps survival depend on innovation, speed, and organizational synergies that efficiently satisfy customer needs. Traditional teams are often not up to this challenge.

Professor Ancona will present a new model of teams, the X-team, that illustrates how teams can become engines of innovation and execution. Challenging the dominant wisdom that successful teams focus on internal dynamics, Ancona builds on twenty years of research to show that when teams teams make external activity a top priority performance takes off. She will draw on examples from BP, Microsoft, Newscorp, and HP.

During this 90 minute session, you will learn how to:

• identify the attributes of high-performing, innovative teams

• jump start X-teams in your company

• create teams that are a vehicle for leadership development

• build an infrastructure of innovation in your organization

It is especially recommended for VPs and Managers of New Product Development, Innovation, R&D, Marketing, Licensing, and OI/Partnering. Teams are welcome to listen together on one line for the same fee, just put it on speakerphone!

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Deborah Ancona
Seley Distinguished Professor of Management
MIT Sloan School of Management

Deborah Ancona is the Seley Distinguished Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and Faculty Director of the MIT Leadership Center. She has served as a consultant on leadership and innovation to premier companies such as AT&T, BP, Vale, Merrill Lynch, and Newscorp.

Deborah’s pioneering research into how successful teams operate has highlighted the critical importance of “managing outside the team’s boundary as well as inside it.” This research has led directly to the concept of X-Teams as a vehicle for driving innovation within large organizations. Her book, “x-teams: how to build teams that lead, innovate, and succeed” was published by Harvard Business School Press in June, 2007.

Deborah’s work has also focused on the concept of “distributed leadership,” and the development of research-based tools, practices, and teaching/coaching models that enable organizations to foster creative leadership at every level. This work was highlighted in a recent article in the Harvard Business Review, “In Praise of the Incomplete Leader,” February, 2007.

In addition to X-Teams, Deborah’s studies of team performance have also been published in the Administrative Science Quarterly, the Academy of Management Journal, Organization Science, and the Sloan Management Review. Her previous book, Managing for the Future: Organizational Behavior and Processes (South-Western College Publishing, 1999, 2005) centers on the skills and processes needed in today’s diverse and changing organization.

Deborah received her BA and MS in psychology from the University of Pennsylvania and her Ph.D. in management from Columbia University.