TEAM PRAISINGS

Books like ours do not just appear out of nowhere. Over numerous years, ideas germinate and eventually result in a concept for a book. Then it takes a great deal of encouragement to move from concept to final product. Along the way to completion of this book you hold in your hands, many people have influenced and supported our efforts. We cannot possibly thank everyone who has had an impact on our thinking about teams, but here are a few very special people who come to mind. For others we do not mention, please forgive us and know that you are appreciated nonetheless.

Steve Piersanti, with Berrett-Koehler Publishers, deserves a whopping big praising for pushing and pushing us to make this book better and better. He helped bring us down to earth on many an occasion yet was always kind and supportive and focused on creating a book that would be useful to those who chose to read and share it.

Also at Berrett-Koehler, we owe a big praising to Jeevan Sivasubramaniam, better known as Jeevan S., for keeping up with all the details and deadlines that kept us moving forward toward a finished product. He even helped keep Steve Piersanti on track at times. 138

Teammates at a variety of companies have been our colleagues and have taught us a great deal about effective teamwork.

Mark Robbins, Jennifer Stanford, and David Heckman, at Robbins-Gioia, Inc., have worked with Alan to create a stronger organization and set of teams in their company, which consults and serves many other companies.

Carmela Southers and Pamela Wagoner, with the Ken Blanchard Companies and Host Marriott, respectively, have taught Alan a lot about working as a team to effect a vision and set of objectives in a large organization.

Susan Steele and John Robison, formerly with HCIA Inc., worked as training and design colleagues with Alan over several years to implement positive organizational change in a growing health services company.

Stephen Sebastian, Virginia Pimentel, and Jose Carabajal, with Cargill, taught Alan about working in a virtual team effort to design a multinational program to teach coaching skills.

Karl Hamlin, an independent IT consultant, taught Alan the value of trust in a team relationship.

Pat West and Kevin Duffy, with PriceWaterhouseCoopers LLP, worked with Alan to create dynamic Web-based classes on project management and helped Alan understand how to work in a virtual team atmosphere.

Numerous colleagues with the Ken Blanchard Companies have been friends, colleagues, and mentors for many years, including but not limited to Pat Zigarmi, Drea Zigarmi, Fred Finch, Laurie Hawkins, Susan Fowler, Dick Ruhe, Dev Ogle, Garry Demarest, Jesse Stoner, Kathleen Martin, and Vicki Halsey. 139

Don Carew and Eunice Parisi-Carew provided their kind and supportive foreword and, more importantly, their over thirty years of mentoring about teams and friendship.

We have many colleagues with whom a relationship dates back to the early 1970s at the University of Massachusetts, where Ken and Alan first met and where the seeds for this book were born, including, among others, Tony Butterfield, Barry Posner, Gary Powell, Susan Carter, and Joe Litterer (now deceased).

A team of valued colleagues at the Ken Blanchard Companies worked with us to bring this book to publication, including Martha Lawrence and Humberto Medina.

And we must also add a huge praising to our colleague and teammate John Carlos, who wrote two previous books with Ken and Alan and would have been involved in this project had he not suddenly passed away this past year. John was a fantastic storyteller, a wonderful teammate, and an even better friend. We have dedicated this book to his memory. John, you are missed.

Finally, no man in his right mind would ever overlook the support and encouragement from his spouse. We are honored to praise our wives for their unending support and love. Much praise to Margie Blanchard, Ruth Anne Randolph, and Barbara Grazier.