I got beautiful teams a few months ago and tore into it hoping for lots of wonderful insights about how to help culture/foster/create functional and beautiful team environments.
Instead, I ended up with a collection of stories from some people (some of which I’ve heard of, most of which I haven’t) that have been on teams and are willing to share their stories.
Now, I know all teams and projects and organizations are different, so maybe my expectation of ‘Here is how you build a team. Step 1:…’ was a little naive, but I certainly wasn’t expecting what I got. There were some interesting stories throughout the book (i.e. a team of folks whose conference room ended up with one of the hijacked planes from 9/11 in it, literally, it crashed into their conference room), but I had few takeaways of solid advice on how or what I could do to help nurture a great team or start to build/rebuild a failing team.
All in all, I’d say there were some entertaining stories, but if you’re looking for some concrete takeaway’s, look elsewhere. And on that note, if you’re looking for entertaining stories, you may be better off reading some Stephen King or something like that as well. Sorry O’Reilly (and Stellman and Greene, also authors of Head First C#, which I do have and enjoyed thoroughly), this just wasn’t for me. Probably my own fault for having false expectations.
