Team First


Book Description

The year 2017 is a special year, the seventieth anniversary of the Brooklyn Dodgers' Jackie Robinson integrating modern baseball. Robinson's successes and challenges have been documented by baseball and civil rights historians. This three-part book presents the chronological history of baseball integration along with the major civil rights events of the 1940s and 1950s. Team First focuses upon each of the sixteen Major League teams and players (with life stories) who were the first to integrate each team. Some individuals were players of the Negro League, Hall of Famers, and World Series players and others whose notable contribution was only being the first to integrate. Information about owners, general managers, and managers influenced teams' orientation about integration. Rates of integration varied by team. The final three teams to integrate happened ten years after Robinson won the 1947 Rookie of the Year Award. Find out how your favorite team approached integration. How did your team compare to other National League and American League teams? How was your favorite team influenced by early civil rights events?




The Advantage


Book Description

There is a competitive advantage out there, arguably more powerful than any other. Is it superior strategy? Faster innovation? Smarter employees? No, New York Times best-selling author, Patrick Lencioni, argues that the seminal difference between successful companies and mediocre ones has little to do with what they know and how smart they are and more to do with how healthy they are. In this book, Lencioni brings together his vast experience and many of the themes cultivated in his other best-selling books and delivers a first: a cohesive and comprehensive exploration of the unique advantage organizational health provides. Simply put, an organization is healthy when it is whole, consistent and complete, when its management, operations and culture are unified. Healthy organizations outperform their counterparts, are free of politics and confusion and provide an environment where star performers never want to leave. Lencioni’s first non-fiction book provides leaders with a groundbreaking, approachable model for achieving organizational health—complete with stories, tips and anecdotes from his experiences consulting to some of the nation’s leading organizations. In this age of informational ubiquity and nano-second change, it is no longer enough to build a competitive advantage based on intelligence alone. The Advantage provides a foundational construct for conducting business in a new way—one that maximizes human potential and aligns the organization around a common set of principles.




The First Team


Book Description

Hailed as one of the finest examples of aviation research, this comprehensive 1984 study presents a detailed and scrupulously accurate operational history of carrier-based air warfare. From the earliest operations in the Pacific through the decisive Battle of Midway, it offers a narrative account of how ace fighter pilots like Jimmy Thach and Butch O'Hare and their skilled VF squadron mates--called the "first team"--amassed a remarkable combat record in the face of desperate odds. Tapping both American and Japanese sources, historian John B. Lundstrom reconstructs every significant action and places these extraordinary fighters within the context of overall carrier operations. He writes from the viewpoint of the pilots themselves, after interviewing some fifty airmen from each side, to give readers intimate details of some of the most exciting aerial engagements of the war. At the same time he assesses the role the fighter squadrons played in key actions and shows how innovations in fighter tactics and gunnery techniques were a primary reason for the reversal of American fortunes. After more than twenty years in print, the book remains the definitive account and is being published in paperback for the first time to reach an even larger audience.




Remote Team Interactions Workbook


Book Description

In the new remote-first and hybrid workplace, many organizations are struggling to catch up with new tooling and ways of working. Many are discovering for the first time that the physical office was covering up poorly defined teams and poorly defined areas of focus, threatening their DevOps transformation efforts and the overall health and success of their business. Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais, coauthors of the highly successful Team Topologies, provide proven patterns for a successful remote-first approach to teams. Using simple tools for dependency tracking and patterns from Team Topologies, such as the Team API, organizations will find that well-defined team interactions are key to effective IT delivery in the remote-first world. This workbook explores several aspects of team-first remote work, including: •How the new “remote-first” world is highlighting existing poor team interactions within organizations. •Why organizations should use the Team API pattern to define and communicate the focus of teams. •How organizations can track and remove team-level dependencies. •How and why organizations should design inter-team communications consciously. •How and why organizations can use the three team interaction modes from Team Topologies (collaboration, x-as-a-service, and facilitating) to help. The ideas and patterns presented here will help your organization become more effective with a team-based, remote-first approach to building and running software systems.




A Path Appears


Book Description

An exploration of how altruism affects us, what are the markers for success, and how to avoid the pitfalls—with scrupulous research and on-the-ground reporting from the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalists and bestselling authors of Half a Sky and Tightrope Kristof and WuDunn will inspire you to "change lives for the better, including your own (The New York Times Book Review). In their recounting of astonishing stories from the front lines of social progress, we see the compelling, inspiring truth of how real people have changed the world, underscoring that one person can make a difference. A Path Appears offers practical, results-driven advice on how best each of us can give and reveals the lasting benefits we gain in return. Kristof and WuDunn know better than most how many urgent challenges communities around the world face to­day. Here they offer a timely beacon of hope for our collective future.




First Team


Book Description

Brock is on the run again in New York Times bestselling author Tim Green’s companion book to New Kid. Perfect for fans of Mike Lupica or Dan Gutman’s Baseball Card Adventure series. With his strong left arm, Brock knows he can be a great quarterback, and with the help of his new friend, Mak, he has a plan to make the first team. But the coaches have plans of their own, especially for the kids from the wrong side of the tracks, which is exactly where Brock now lives. As Brock is trying to fit in, his father’s past is catching up to him—and one chance meeting causes everything to come crashing down. Will Brock finally be able to navigate his new life, or will his past force him back on the run?




The B-Team: The Case of the Angry First Wife


Book Description

Del's great-aunt, Kitty, has retired from a life of crime and embarked on a new venture, the B-Team. Although Del works at an animal shelter by day, by night she, her great-aunt and their cohorts, Dino and Ritz, use their criminal skills to right wrongs. In this fun book, the modern-day Robin Hoods set out to return a necklace to its rightful owner but along the way discover they've been duped by an imposter who also wants to get her hands on the necklace. The problem is, criminals can't go to the police, even if they are on the side of the good. Del comes up with a new plan, and the B-Team saves the day. Not without a few detours along the way.




The First Soviet Cosmonaut Team


Book Description

The First Soviet Cosmonaut Team will relate who these men were and offer far more extensive background stories, in addition to those of the more familiar names of early Soviet space explorers from that group. Many previously-unpublished photographs of these “missing” candidates will also be included for the first time in this book. It will be a detailed, but highly readable and balanced account of the history, training and experiences of the first group of twenty cosmonauts of the USSR. A covert recruitment and selection process was set in motion throughout the Soviet military in August 1959, just prior to the naming of America’s Mercury astronauts. Those selected were ordered to report for training at a special camp outside of Moscow in the spring of 1960. Just a year later, Senior Lieutenant Yuri Gagarin of the Soviet Air Force (promoted in flight to the rank of major) was launched aboard a Vostok spacecraft and became the first person ever to achieve space flight and orbit the Earth.




The First-time Manager's Guide to Team Building


Book Description

The First-Time Manager Make the transition from team member to team leader Understand the difference between a team and a work group Hold team members accountable Make their teams more productive Manage challenging situations and resolve conflict within a team. Written in an engaging, conversational style, Topchik explains the five essential qualities of a high-performing team: goals and standards; decision making; honest communication; clear roles and responsibilities; and celebrating success. Packed with activities and assessments for both the manager and team members, this is an essential guide for any manager who strives for team-building success.




First Team Dad


Book Description

Do You Have a Game Plan? Premier agent Drew Pittman loves sports. Maybe even more than you do. But an experience early in his management career convinced him that a life of significance is about faith, family, and football--and always in that order. So how do you make significance your game plan? Competitive sports are filled with lessons about motivation, perseverance, hard work, and collaboration--and these lessons are powerfully transferable to everyday life. Yet few men apply them to the most important arena they'll ever play in: their home. In First Team Dad, Drew Pittman shares the principles that can change the game in your family, straight from a sports insider who has field-tested each and every one with his home team. With heart-pounding stories of unforgettable plays and one-in-a-million players, First Team Dad is your ticket to create a legacy of significance in your family. "It's my hope that by reading First Team Dad you will be motivated to do a better job of leading your family and that you will reach out to other men you know to help them catch this vision."--Tony Dungy, former NFL head coach and bestselling author "Knowing Drew, I've been encouraged and challenged by his example and wisdom--read this book so you can get to know this man as well."--John Schneider, executive vice president and general manager, Seattle Seahawks "To the football fan's delight, Drew shares behind-the-scenes stories about his experiences with famous players and coaches in order to demonstrate practical points about having a strong family. I believe every man who reads this book will walk away inspired and will have a game plan for his own family."--Robert Morris, founding senior pastor, Gateway Church, Dallas Texas; bestselling author, The Blessed Life