An organization's fate hinges on its CEO--right? Not according to the authors of Senior Leadership Teams.

They argue that in today's world of neck-snapping change, demands on leaders in top roles are rapidly outdistancing the capabilities of any one person - no matter how talented. Result? Chief executives are turning to their enterprise's senior leaders for help. Yet many CEOs stumble when creating a leadership team.

One major challenge is that senior executives often focus more on their individual roles than on the top team's shared work. Without the CEO's careful attention to setting the team up correctly, these high-powered managers often have difficulty pulling together to move their organization forward. Sometimes they don't even agree about what constitutes the right path forward. The authors explain how to determine whether your organization needs a senior leadership team. Then, drawing on their study of 100+ top teams from around the world, they explain how to create a clear and compelling purpose for your team, get the right people on it, provide structure and support, and sharpen team members' competencies - and your own.

Timely and practical, this book enables you to create and sustain a leadership team whose members learn from one another while collaborating to pursue your company's objectives.

Ruth Wageman is Edgar Pierce Professor of Social and Organizational Psychology at Harvard University and Director of Research for Hay Group.

Debra Nunes and James Burruss are Vice Presidents at Hay Group's McClelland Institute for Research and Innovation.

J. Richard Hackman is Professor of Social and Organizational Psychology at Harvard University. He resides in Bethany, Connecticut and Cambridge, Massachusetts.