Who's in the Room? How Great Leaders Structure and Manage the Teams Around Them

Is your company run by a team with no name? At the top of every organization chart lies a myth—that aSenior Management Team makes a company's critical decisions. Thereality is that critical decisions are typically made by the bossand a small group of confidants—a "team with noname"—outside of formal processes. Meanwhile, other membersof the management team wonder why they weren't in the room or evenconsulted ahead of time. The dysfunction that results from this gapbetween myth and reality has led to years of unproductive teambuilding exercises. The problems, Frisch shows, are ones of processand structure, not psychology. In Who's in the Room? Bob Frisch provides a uniqueperspective to this widely misunderstood issue. Flying in the faceof decades of organizational psychology, he argues that thesolution lies not in addressing behaviors, but in unseating thesenior management team as the epicenter of decision making. Using abroad portfolio of teams—large and small, permanent andtemporary, formal and informal—great leaders match eachdecision to the appropriate team in a fluid, flexible approach thatyou won't find described in management textbooks. Who's in the Room? is based on interviews with CEOs atorganizations ranging from MasterCard to Ticketmaster to The RedCross. Understand and embrace the way decision-making actually happensin their organizations Use these "teams with no names" to best advantage Engage the Senior Management Team in the three critical tasksfor which it is ideally suited Organizations will get better decisions and superior results byunleashing the full potential of their Senior Management Teams. Andbosses will see a dramatic drop-off in people coming into theiroffices asking, "Why wasn't I in the room?"