Dream Teams

By: Shane Snow

Narrated by: Shane Snow, Aaron Walton

Length: 6 hrs and 51 mins

Publisher's Summary

Award-winning entrepreneur and journalist Shane Snow reveals the counterintuitive reasons why so many partnerships and groups break down - and why some break through. 

The best teams are more than the sum of their parts, but why does collaboration so often fail to fulfill this promise? In Dream Teams, Snow takes us on an adventure through history, neuroscience, psychology, and business, exploring what separates groups that simply get by together from those that get better together.  

You'll learn: 

• How ragtag teams - from soccer clubs to startups to gangs of pirates - beat the odds throughout history. 
• Why Daimler Chrysler flopped while the Wu-Tang Clan succeeded, and the surprising factor behind most failed mergers, marriages, and partnerships. 
• What the Wright Brothers' daily arguments can teach us about group problem solving.
• Pioneering women in law enforcement, unlikely civil rights collaborators, and underdog armies that did the incredible together. 
• The team players behind great social movements in history, and the science of becoming open-minded.  

Provocative and entertaining, Dream Teams is a landmark work that will change the way we think about people, progress, and collaboration.  

Includes a Bonus PDF with an illustrated special afterword with Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant, the Dream Teams Cheat Sheet, and more.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio. 

©2018 Shane Snow (P)2018 Penguin Audio

Great book for anyone who has to work with anyone

First, the audiobook element - read by the narrator, which can be a mixed bag, but in this case great. He's easy to listen to and there are a few scattered audio clips that break up the sound nicely. (Note, at the time of this writing, the audio sample started with the preface, which is a different narrator, so listen for about 2 minutes to get to the actual book.) I also really appreciate when books edited are slightly for the audio format. For example, the author described any charts and graphs such that I didn't feel like I was missing a thing.
Now for the book. It's a well-constructed case, filled to the brim with stories to illustrate the point (which works extra well, since the book closes with a discussion of how impactful storytelling is). I feel like I learned about 50 extra things, in addition to getting a solid understanding of what makes a "dream team". I especially liked how sometimes the author led you down a path to a neat conclusion, only to then argue a bit from the other side. Relationships and human interactions are complex, and so this book doesn't pretend that it's a simple, one-step thing or keep dwelling on some single, superficial explanation. Yet for all this complexity, you do walk away from the book with a handful of tidy and concrete ideas to put to the test. I'd recommend this book to anyone who leads a team, obviously, but also any of us on a team as well. I'm more of the latter, yet I feel like I have much more to contribute now and have a better understanding of how to do so.

6 of 6 people found this review helpful

Inspiring Examples

Wonderful and surprising true short stories as historical examples of team building. I greatly enjoyed and value this book.

Outstanding

I loved this book from start to finish. Snow is a compelling storyteller. I coach a team of university students who compete in business case competitions, and, after reading this book, I will require them all to not only read but also internalize the information. I am eager to calculate my own IH and openness scores, and I hope to change my way of looking at the world by being open to others' perspectives and heuristics. THANK YOU!!