After nearly sixty years of participating in team and group activities and about half that time spent in coaching and studying the functionality of teams, I feel I've come to a conclusive level of understanding about what makes one team work better than another. Yet this all started as an investigation. Starting with the big question - why do some teams look great on paper yet come up short in the reality of performance? For with all great teams, they are always greater than the sum of the skills and attributes of their individual members. Is it mere chemistry - or is there something far more tangible, and therefore accessible, going on? Is it the vision and personalities of the leaders, coaches, mentors and managers - or is there a formula, a template? My conclusion was the six elements that make up the acronym CACTUS, and in this book those elements are explained and explored.