Faster Together

Accelerating Your Team's Productivity

There are more roadblocks to productivity today than ever before. Everyone who works must deal with countless emails, constant communication, cascading deadlines, and seemingly endless meetings. These can be managed efficiently, or they can be a huge time suck. When you're surrounded by slow-moving coworkers, you're stuck in a traffic jam of sorts. What makes the difference isn't individuals working harder or faster or smarter but “teaming well.”

You have at your disposal what Stack calls “the most powerful productivity machine in existence”: your team. Individual productivity is just the beginning of business profitability; the real winner is team productivity. A good team can accomplish more, and more quickly, than any one Lone Ranger. Yes, there are always stars—in sports, Peyton Manning, Mia Hamm, and Stephen Curry come to mind—but they couldn't do their jobs without the rest of the team doing theirs.

Bestselling author Laura Stack's FAST model mobilizes teams to be the most effective they can be, while keeping each other's best interests at heart. Using her original model, teams learn to work together Fairly, accept Accountability, apply Systems Thinking, and maximize available Technology. An interactive assessment helps you evaluate your team's current speed and rate of acceleration.

By the end of this book, you'll truly understand the abilities of your team. Team members will ask themselves, “How can I help my team go faster together?” You work to save everyone else time, and they work to save you time. For your business to win, everyone must contribute. As Stack puts it, “Team up; don't slow down!”

So, rev your team's engines, and you'll soon be roaring down the track together!