Teams Books

Tom Massey has given us a ten commitment strategy for getting the right people in the right position to build a vision focused, values based, purpose driven, service oriented high performance team.

The format from the table of contents to the final chapter stimulates thought provoking reading. The book is designed to be read quickly for an overview. A second reading is necessary to digest, and assimilate the principles introduced. Each chapter closes with a set of questions and activities for application to assist the team leader in implementing and applying these principles effectively.

The book is forceful and straightforward, an excellent tool for integrating your purpose statement, goals, objectives and performance. Massey's thoughtful analysis and creative thinking can be applied in every business setting.

The author stresses the importance of committing to a learning environment. He gives pointers for action based strategic leadership training and step by step instructions to equip your team.

Massey is recognized as a distinguished innovative corporate leadership trainer and coach. He has authored three other cutting edge books in the business/self help genre.

This is a significant management resource tool for equipping the busy business executive. I recommend the book for every manager who wants to sharpen the focus of their team, and for "anyone who aspires to leave the world a better place."

Reviewed by Cherie Fisher for Reader Views (01/07)

The "Ten Commitments for Building High Performance Teams" has lots of valuable management advice packed into 82 pages. Tom Massey, the author, heads each chapter with one of the 10 commitments needed for building a successful team. The author promises in the introduction "The ten commitments outlined in this book will help you get the right people in the right positions to develop a focused, values driven, high performance team." Massey asks you to read the book all the way through and then read each commitment separately and incorporate it before moving onto the next commitment. Each chapter also has a practical applications section that includes questions and activities pertinent to applying that section.

The 10 Commitments are as follows:

1. Commit to getting the right people "on the bus." Take the time to really think about the qualities, skills and needs that each job requires before making the hiring decision.
2. Commit to getting everyone on the same page. A team can only be effective if it's has a common goal and vision.
3. Commit to creating a learning environment. Investing in your team can create an environment that will lead to success.
4. Commit to sharing the profits and losses. A team will feel vested in a business and strive harder when they can also enjoy the profits.
5. Commit to turning around poor performance. Poor performance has to be turned around or it can bring down the whole team.
6. Commit to dancing with "those that brought you." This is very important chapter on loyalty - yours, as well as the team.
7. Commit to playing to win. You have to be able to move your team through fear to develop a winner's attitude.
8. Commit to growing through adversity. Conflict is a part of team work. Accept it and teach your team to work through it.
9. Commit to having fun. High performance teams typically have high productivity, creativity and morale. The bottom line is they have fun.
10. Commit to playing large. It has to be more than just a job for a team to be successful. Give them purpose.

The book is written in a straightforward common-sense approach. I highly recommend "Ten Commitments for Building High Performance Teams" for those of you in management or contemplating going into management. I plan to immediately implement these commitments into my team at work.

Tom is passionate about the subject and it shows in his meticulous research in Textile League Baseball. Life around the old mills and the teams that sprang up from these tight mill communities, made for some wonderful and exciting times in our state in the old days - and Tom has captured the feel of this period beautifully! I have owned this volume since it was first published in 1993 & still often refer back to it. Thanks for a great book!
Bruce Mayer, Sumter, SC

Tom Perry is to be commended for performing so well with an arduous task. His book provides much information about teams and players in the South Carolina Upstate during the days of Textile League baseball. Without the research Tom has done, this generation and those to come would know less and less about this era of mill baseball that produced so many great teams and players in addition to making the monotony of mill life much more palatable to the workers. In addition to his text, his listing of yearly teams along with their records and rosters make this volume extremely helpful as a reference book. What Tom undertook was no easy task. But baseball fans owe a thank you to this author whose work will continue to be valuable source for generations to come.

Written by Ron Kramer with newspaper writer Dan Ewald, and comfortably narrated in third person, That's Just Kramer! From Michigan Legend to Lombardi's "12th Man" is the biography of talented athlete Ron Kramer, from his days dominating football, basketball, and track in the University of Michigan, to his time to playing as one of the Green Bay Packers, to choosing his family over his professional career by switching teams and returning home to Detroit, and more. Black-and-white photographs illustrate this down-to-earth chronicle of Kramer's life, career, and passions. An enthralling biography especially recommended for football fans.

I remember reading the following quote in Sport magazine during the late 1950's:

"In 1957 two Michigan exports splashed across the American scene both accompanied by terrific fanfare. One was an automobile called the Edsel. The other was a tank named Ronald John Kramer."

Dan Ewald , who has written books about such Michigan notables as George Kell, Sparky Anderson, and Bo Schembechler has provided us with an excellent account on the life of Ron Kramer who starred for the Michigan Wolverines, Green Bay Packers, and the Detroit Lions. Kramer credits his family for instilling in him the discipline necessary for his success at Michigan, the college he chose to attend so his parents could see him play. For their inept play in 1956 the Green Bay Packers received a bonus pick in the 1957 draft as the rules then allowed. That choice went for Notre Dame's Paul Hornung. With the first choice in the regular round the Packers chose Michigan's Ron Kramer. A broken leg in his rookie season threatened his career, but the arrival of Coach Vince Lombardi in 1959 revitalized his career as it did for several others on the team. Lombardi saw Kramer as an ideal tight end, his "12th man on the field", because Kramer could both catch passes and block for others. This was a position held by Packer veteran Gary Knafelc who lacked the size and quickness of Kramer. This was a team going nowhere under previous coaches Lisle Blackbourn and Ray "Scooter" McLean yet possessed a number of future Hall of Famers. The differences between them and Lombardi was that Lombardi stressed discipline and preparation. Following the 1964 season Kramer requested a trade to the Detroit Lions so he could be closer to home where he felt he was needed due to family matters. It was either that or retire. Had he remained in Green Bay he would have ended up on five championship teams instead of two and most likely cemented his place in football's Hall of Fame. However, family came before football as Lombardi himself stressed, and the trade was made. The situation on the Lions under coach Harry Gilmer compared with the Packers was significant. The book also deals with his family life after football and Kramer's emphasis on the importance on friendship in one's life. I did find one error in the book. The author twice refers to Fordham's Seven "Rocks" of Granite when it should be Seven Blocks of Granite. There have been numerous books written on former Green Bay Packer players and I'm glad to see one on Green Bay's other star player named Kramer, Ron Kramer. Football fan or not, you should enjoy it.

This workbook is an excellent tool for the third grader. It is simple to follow, and each week's lesson builds upon the previous week's lesson so the kids are not intimidated by all of the tools at their disposal!

They learn the fundamentals the hardware, plus key functions in many critical programs...Word, Publisher, Internet.

The workbook also keeps it fun for a third grader..the "projects" are fun and many are seasonally timely...I love the Halloween/Christmas/Valentine projects that come home.

My son has taught me a few things after using this workbook!!!!

I teach technology in High School and was ready to spend a lot of time helping my third grader learn computers. however, this book made it so easy for me that I didn't even need to help. by the end of it he was working cheat sheet in math for Microsoft Excel, made a magazine in publisher, wrote a report with pictures in word and did a slide show in powerpoint with music, transitions, and animations. many of his classmates showed similar sucess, i recommend it to any and all parents and schools

I am one of those Yankee-Met fans, although I go back a lot longer with the Yankees. The subway series was a dream come true for me.

This book takes you back through one of the most magical of Yankee seasons. The author knows how to stir those baseball juices in you.

All I can say is "buy it."

If you are a yankee fan like i am you will love this book! It has everything about the 98 champion season, like David Cones perfect game, The incredible 125-50 record, and more! I recomend this book to any baseball fan especially Yankee fans!

Ok, the only reason i bought was because I love tiki stuff and I adore the art of Shag. I just got the engagement calendar yesterday and I can't stop showing it to people.
Here's why: it has pages up front for you to list your favorite things that you keep forgetting to do like movies to see, restaurants to try, gifts to buy (for others and yourself), websites, cd's, etc. Then it also has a place for you to list the 20 top things you want to do in your life time, plus a nutrition chart, car chart, pet and health chart. THEN it goes into the monthly calendars to jot in appts and such. Each month ends with an expense page to tally up your finances. At the back it has an address book followed by blank pages.
In between all that it has drink recipes, the history of tikis, etc...way cool (not to mention Shag's art all the way thru). Did I mention it comes with a bamboo pen?
It was the best 16.00 bucks I spent all year!

I received this as a gift and already want to buy another one so I have one for next year. The layout is fun, the graphics are fun, there are each month has "tiki trivia" tidbits.

Excelente obra que nos muestra la forma en como sacar provecho de los equipos de trabajo en el desarrollo de proyectos de software. Felicito al Sr. Watts. S. Humprey por su visión en el tema.

TSP is a sequel to Humphrey's earlier book, PSP. That text concentrated on the actions of a single programmer or designer. Now in TSP, Humphrey expands the scope, to discuss what it means to lead and motivate a team of programmers. The acronym TSP stands for Team Software Process. But a close reading of the text suggests that you do not have to take "Software" literally. Your team might be a bunch of engineers or architects or financial analysts.

Though, to be sure, the examples in the text and several of the guidelines pertain explicitly to code development. Yet if you are a flexible enough manager and team leader, you might be able to generalise those guidelines to your situation.

Humphrey makes several remarks that some readers might cheer. He suggests that knowledge of specific tools and methods, while useful, is secondary to amassing an experienced and capable team. If you can do this, then they will surely be able to quickly pick up expertise in those tools or methods. If you have looked at job postings, you have undoubtedly come across those with a laundry list of detailed required skills. Some of which are mundane and low level. But try convincing that company's HR department of this!

On the subject of team building, he dumps on commercial team building exercises. You know. Where some consulting firm charges your company a huge amount for taking your team to an offsite location for a day of artificial exercises. While these may indeed build some espirit de corps, typically these is no relation to the actual work environment and real issues facing your team. But because team building is such an intangible thing, and impossible to quantify, the team wastes a day and the consulting firm makes money.

These two examples are actually minor parts of the text. But they really struck me (and perhaps you) as being very cogent analysis. Somewhat cynical maybe, but Humphrey has his wits about him.

I found many interesting facts about Micky I never knew before.
I hear he is writing books on Pete (Come on put me in the Hall of Fame already) Rose, Micheal Jorden,Mickey Mantle 2 and others are in the works.
Looking forward to reading them all.

I hear Tom Burkard is a member of the Knights of Columbus South Amboy Council #426 and at certain book signings he donates some money to the childrens Christmas party.

A FINE WRITER AND FINE PERSON.

I received my copy of The Ultimate Mickey Mantle Trivia Book by Tom Burkard today and havent been able to put it down...this is an outstanding work, and is incredible in its in depth and detail. I look forward to seeing more books by this great author, and I hope considers writing another about "The Mick"

This is a beautifully documented book, one that actually shows what went on over there. It should be viewed by military and non military alike, and would make a great coffee table book. The comments are very detailed even though the events happened 39 years ago. A very interesting read, althought the photographs are the best. A must read!

Steve Waterman, who co-created the original UDT-13 cruise book in 1968, first cracked the door on what it was like to be a sailor during the Vietnam era in his Just a Sailor. The door is prized open a bit further with this faithful reproduction of what was standard fare for sailors during those days--a book that documented the everyday (and sometimes exciting) activities of Navymen and -women on deployment. These cruise books were purchased by the participants at the end of the "cruise."

What this book does is provide a visual record (with explanatory subtitles) of just one of those deployments, that of Underwater Demolition Team 13's six-month "vacation" in the lands and waters of the Far East, to include Vietnam. What was intended to be a scrapbook-souvenir for deploying personnel is now a unique historical document.

From Subic Bay, Philippines, to the jungles and rice paddies and city streets of Vietnam, UDT-13 frogmen and their fleet comrades-in-arms left their marks and were in turn marked. This unique volume in its own way shows the circumstances of those markings.

Waterman, author of Just a Sailor, another "period piece," may well have had in mind a pictorial documentation of that book, and it serves that purpose well. "Cruise Book" has made me want to drag out my own cruise book of the deployment of UDT-12, which, three years later, went to the same places and did many of the same things as the men of UDT-12. It will be interesting to compare photos and commentary!

Waterman has done a great service to historians and lay people alike in the resurrection of a true historical document. I highly recommend it as a trip back to a unique time in US Navy history.

Larry Bailey
Captain (SEAL), US Navy (Retired)

Read about the 1908 season from the perspective of a newpaper reader in the early 20th century. A facinating book, of interest to the historian as well as the baseball fan. The newspaper accounts of Merkle's disasterous decision that cost the NY Giants the pennent are priceless.

Could there have been such a time? The Chicago Cubs were the defending National League and World Champions of Baseball and were fighting to win their third straight pennant in 1908. The Cubs faced determined opposition from both the New York Giants and the Pittsburgh Pirates in a horse race that was going to be decided at the wire. What makes this account fascinating is that G. H. Fleming carefully edited actual newspaper accounts from a variety of contemporary sources to give the reader a feeling of what it was like to follow baseball in 1908. The grandstands were wooden, if you could not afford a ticket, you could climb a tree or find a knothole in the fence from which to watch. Ham sandwiches were as likely to be sold at games as hot dogs. The Cubs played their games on the West Side of Chicago and their uniforms and baggage were delivered to train stations by horse drawn wagons. The marquee players on all of the teams in the book have been immortalized in the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, with the sole exception of Turkey Mike Donlin and Harry Steinfeldt. This story has more than its share of excitement, including near riots on the playing field and a suicide of a top baseball official. It has been a full century since the Chicago Cubs celebrated a World Series Championship. Read this book and you will be transported back to the time of their last title.