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

by Bob Frisch (Author)

Is your company run by a team with no name?

At the top of every organization chart lies a myth--that a Senior Management Team makes a company's critical decisions. The reality is that critical decisions are typically made by the boss and a small group of confidants--a "team with no name"--outside of formal processes. Meanwhile, other members of the management team wonder why they weren't in the room or even consulted ahead of time. The dysfunction that results from this gap between myth and reality has led to years of unproductive team building exercises. The problems, Frisch shows, are ones of process and structure, not psychology.

In Who's in the Room? Bob Frisch provides a unique perspective to this widely misunderstood issue. Flying in the face of decades of organizational psychology, he argues that the solution lies not in addressing behaviors, but in unseating the senior management team as the epicenter of decision making. Using a broad portfolio of teams--large and small, permanent and temporary, formal and informal--great leaders match each decision to the appropriate team in a fluid, flexible approach that you won't find described in management textbooks.

Who's in the Room? is based on interviews with CEOs at organizations ranging from MasterCard to Ticketmaster to The Red Cross.

• Understand and embrace the way decision-making actually happens in their organizations
• Use these "teams with no names" to best advantage
• Engage the Senior Management Team in the three critical tasks for which it is ideally suited

Organizations will get better decisions and superior results by unleashing the full potential of their Senior Management Teams. And bosses will see a dramatic drop-off in people coming into their offices asking, "Why wasn't I in the room?"

Front Jacket

At the top of every organization chart lies a myth--that the boss and senior management team make all the critical decisions together. In reality, most decisions are actually made by the boss and an inner circle of confidants--a "team with no name" that exists outside formal processes.

This gap between the myth and reality of decision making causes significant problems. Executives wonder why they weren't consulted earlier. Bosses wonder why team members have trouble grasping the big picture. There's a tension in the executive suite, and repeated attempts at team building don't seem to resolve it.

In Who's in the Room? Bob Frisch provides a unique perspective to this widely misunderstood issue. Flying in the face of decades of organizational psychology, he argues that the solution lies not in addressing behaviors, but in unseating the senior management team as the epicenter of decision making. Using a broad portfolio of teams--large and small, permanent and temporary, formal and informal--great leaders match each decision to the appropriate team in a fluid, flexible approach that you won't find described in management textbooks.

Frisch's decades of experience as one of the world's leading strategy facilitators have given him unparalleled access to senior executives as they worked through their most critical decisions. Drawing on insights from interviews with the CEOs of organizations ranging from MasterCard to Ticketmaster to the Red Cross, Frisch shows how great leaders can unleash the full power of their senior management teams against a specific set of critical tasks for which they are uniquely suited.

The result: The right teams addressing the right issues at the right time, a renewed sense of collective purpose for the organization's most senior and valued leaders, and, most importantly, bosses seeing an end to people asking, "Why wasn't I in the room?"

Back Jacket

Praise for Who's in the Room?

"Many business observers talk about executive decision making, but few take you inside the meeting rooms the way Bob Frisch does, or make you rethink what goes on there. Who's in the Room? will cause a lot of leadership teams to set aside time to talk about how decisions are--and should be--made in their organizations. For most of those teams, that will be a unique and much-needed discussion."
--Walt Macnee, vice chairman, MasterCard Worldwide

"Bob Frisch's thirty years of experience in the executive suites of the world's largest companies have led to provocative new insights into how decisions get made at the highest levels of organizations. Whether you fully agree with his premise or not, this book makes a significant contribution to our understanding of top team effectiveness."
--Warren Bennis, Distinguished Professor of Business, University of Southern California; and author, Still Surprised: A Memoir of a Life in Leadership

"Who's in the Room? puts forward a pragmatic, easily implemented way for companies large and small, across industries and borders, to rapidly improve the quality of their decision making and the effectiveness of their leadership teams. It highlights some basic truths about how leaders lead, how teams behave, and how organizations work, that will have you changing the way you run your company by the time you finish reading it."
--Doug Stotz, executive vice president and chief marketing officer, Bank of Montreal

"Rarely does a book reset the way we at look at something and truly shift our basic assumptions about routine activities. Who's in the Room? is one of those books. It will permanently change your thinking about how organizations should be led."
--Michael Treacy, coauthor, The Discipline of Market Leaders

Author Biography

Bob Frisch, managing partner of The Strategic Offsites Group, has worked with organizations ranging from Fortune 500 companies to German mittelstand family businesses to the U.S. Department of State. Bob's work has been featured in the Harvard Business Review, the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg Businessweek, and Fortune.