Making Teams Work
Learning a la Carte Video series
Peter Quarry interviews Dr Edward Hubbard
From Gower Publishing, 39 Milton Park, Oxon, OX14 4TD, U.K.
Email: lorna.gordon@bookpoint.co.uk
Date of publication 1999 Code Number: 9 999 99363X
Price: £120.00
http://www.gowertraining.co.uk

The promotional material which accompanies this video describes it as having "no frills, simply good practical advice, condensed into 11-17 minutes."

This is one of a series of 64 videos. The publisher's first aim is "to describe the critical challenges facing managers at the turn of the Millenium." It doesn’t do that Their second aim is "to deliver innovative solutions and informed insights into how best to tackle these same challenges". It doesn’t do that either

At 13 minutes, the length of the video is about all you can take, when there are only three camera shots, the interviewer, the interviewee and the joint shot which includes the coffee table with the flowers on it.

There is conversation about teams of managers and subordinates, teams which require some direction, teams with a coach, and pure self managed teams. The fundamental conclusion of the discussion is that you need different teams for different situations and flexibility is required. There was mention of the work of Rosabeth Moss Kantor, but no discussion of the rather more fundamental work of Belbin on teams.

My deepest concern was, on first listening, how little of the conversation I could remember, a reinforcement to us all that a video of talking heads needs to be enhanced by stories, diagrams, animations if it is to have any impact. On a five star scale this video scores just *

Chris Green
Senior Lecturer in Media Management
Manchester Metropolitan University
http://www.mmu.ac.uk