My last post was about the interesting story that Jason Zweig published in the Wall Street Journal on how to run groups so that they do the most good — and least harm — when making financial decisions.  As I said in that post, Harvard's J. Richard Hackman is arguably the world's expert on group and team effectiveness. Richard's dissertation was on group effectivness and he has been chipping away at the problem for over 40 years.  This current Harvard Business Review has a great interview with Richard called Why Teams Don't Work.   It cannot capture all the nuances of his book Leading Teams, but it is the best single compact summary I know of what Richard has learned and come to believe during his impressive career — it is in simple language with clear guidelines, and the stories and evidence are good, but the part that can't be made clear in such a short interview are the literally thousands of studies (by Richard and many others) and thousands of experiences in groups and teams Richard has had that underpin this interview.  It is as great example of profound simplicity in the management world– the holy grail for wise researchers and leaders.  It looks like you have to pay to read the whole thing. But it sure is good.