2012 news derond thereisaniinteam1

What can managers learn from great sports teams?

14 June 2012

The article at a glance

Dr Mark de Rond to host a live Harvard Business Review webinar talking about the research behind his latest book Dr Mark …

Dr Mark de Rond to host a live Harvard Business Review webinar talking about the research behind his latest book

front cover of "There Is An I In Team"Dr Mark de Rond, Reader in Strategy and Organisation at Cambridge Judge Business School, will be taking part in a live interactive Harvard Business Review webinar, in which he will share key insights into his latest book – There is an I in Team.

Taking place on Thursday 14 June at 17:00 GMT+1, Dr de Rond will share his research, knowledge and the unexpected lessons learned about how great sports teams achieve high levels of performance and how these can be adapted to benefit the business world.

By drawing on his own fieldwork, on extensive interviews with athletes, and on experimental data extracted from the desks, classrooms and labs of the world’s top universities – Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, Chicago and, of course, Cambridge – Dr de Rond turns commonplace assumptions about teams on their heads. He explains why idiosyncrasy matters, why the best teams are often not made up of the best individuals, why likeability can matter more than competence, why harmony can hurt performance, why conflict arises even as intentions are perfectly aligned, and why there is an I in even the most effective of teams.

There is an I in Team is published by Harvard Business Review Press on 3 July. Dr de Rond’s previous book, The Last Amateurs, was selected as one of the Best Business Books of 2008 by the Financial Times, as Book of the Week by The Independent, as a top summer read by JP Morgan, and as one of the 10 Best Sporting Reads of the year by BBC Sport.