Great Group, in vocational psychology dictionary

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Dictionary of Vocational Psychology

Great Group

A great group is a project team in which an extremely capable leader has brought together an extraordinary group of gifted workers to accomplish great things while at the same time experiencing the joy and personal transformation that such accomplishment brings. All members of the great group share a dream in which they are intensely invested; members of such groups have high instrinsic motivation to help the project succeed. The groups range greatly in size. Bennis (1997) coined the term in his narrative accounts of several great groups, including:

Walt Disney's team that created Snow White
Steve Jobs' Macintosh team
Lockheed's Skunk Works
Black Mountain College
The Manhattan Project

Beyond the basic notion that very intelligent, creative, and capable members of the group are led by a strong leader and share a dream, the commonalities across the great groups suggest that the leader of the group requires someone else in the group to provide the "brakes" on initiatives once that initiative has reached a sufficient level of progress.

Websites of interest

The Secrets of Great Groups, by Warren Bennis, from the Peter F. Drucker Foundation.

Questions and Answers with Warren Bennis, from Online NewsHour, from April 3, 1997.

History of Walt Disney Studios. From Disney.go.com.

History of Black Mountain College. From American Masters, from pbs.org.

Ryan Kirk's Ultimate Skunk Works Site.

The History and Ethics of the Manhattan Project, by Miguel A. Bracchini, Mechanical Engineering Department, University of Texas at Austin (1997).

History of the Manhattan Project, from Bella Online.

Making the Macintosh, from a project produced by Alex Pang. One of the best-designed websites around.

References

Organizing Genius