For whatever reason, there are people in our lives that we experience as difficult, don’t respect, or that chafe us in some way. To remain effective in our work, these are the individuals who teach us humility, patience, empathy, and compassion.

Russell “Russ” Ackoff was one of the great minds of the 20th century. He was a longtime resident of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and is widely recognized as one of the world’s leading authorities on Systems Thinking. For more than 20 years he was a professor of Systems Science at the Wharton School of business, and he was a lifelong friend of both Peter Drucker and W. E. Deming. His leadership theory defined a nascent branch of industrial engineering. He went on to write 30 other books, becoming one of the most influential management thinkers of our time.

Most project teams do not fail because nobody made a plan. They struggle because people begin working from different assumptions about the problem, the boundaries of the work, who owns what, and how decisions will get made.

A team charter gives the group something to work from before those differences become expensive.