Hot Groups : Seeding Them, Feeding Them, and Using Them to Ignite Your Organization

You can't plan for a collection of employees to become a hot group. It's not a committee or a task force. Governments can't legislate them into being. Employers may not even want them around, since they tend to be egalitarian and disordered--the opposite of a hierarchical structure. A group of young computer programmers could get together and work for days at a time, both for the love of computer programming and because they feel they're on the verge of an important moment, and the result could be Microsoft. A collection of writers, producers, directors, actors, and camera operators could get hired to work on a TV show, realize that show has the potential to be something different and special, and end up with Hill Street Blues. A team of middle-aged white males in suits and starched military uniforms could gather in the middle of the Cuban Missile Crisis, ultimately preventing any missiles from being fired.

The authors believe that hot groups are the antidote to lumbering, inflexible organizations, whether they be corporations, military chains of command, or government bureaucracies. They're what gives individuals in those organizations a chance to find meaning and fulfillment in their work, and they're what breaks through logjams and deadlocks and achieves what others had thought to be impossible. Along with lots of examples of hot groups in action, the authors provide concrete steps employers can take to form, manage, and get the most out of them. There's also a valuable cautionary chapter on how the dynamics of a hot group can be changed for the worse--a change in management, or a disturbance in team chemistry with the addition or withdrawal of a member. The point managers can take away from this book is that once you get such a dynamic team going, you have to let it run. Hot Groups, as much as any book can, shows how. --Lou Schuler