Boynton and Fischer’s book is about teams that excel above and beyond the capabilities of each individual team member. They draw stories from a wide range of subjects: the arts, science and industry. The teams they describe are all about creating massive change and they accomplish this by bringing together the absolute best people for each required function. These teams are not meant to work together amicably and produce consistent results over the long haul: they come together for a specific purpose (to drive massive change) and most often they dissolve after their task is complete. Example teams include Miles Davis’ bands, Thomas Edison’s workers and Norsk Hydro’s engineering team.
The book is great for giving perspective on how to bring teams like this together and how to handle them so that they are as effective as possible. The case studies are entertaining and informative and they gave me lots of ideas about how to make this work in a corporate setting.
The lessons you can draw from this book are invaluable: if you need to really change the direction of your business it definitely deserves a read.
I will say that the last chapter or two on how to apply this to your business are the weakest of the book: after reading that the critical factor in any Virtuoso Team is that you get the best possible people (not just the people available) it is a little of a let down to read that you can use the same techniques with your current team.
The section on “Deep Dives” also seems a bit out of place. Although this is an effective means of designing products and developing new ideas, it seemed somewhat disconnected from the ideas presented in the case studies. It was valuable information, but seemed like a topic for another book.