Patrick Lencioni is a management consultant and alumnus of Bain & Company and Oracle who struck out on his own and has published a dozen business books since 1998. He runs the Table Group.
Lencioni writes about team dynamics and how to make organizations perform better. Most of his books, such as “Five Dysfunctions of a Team”, are business fables. The notable exception is “The Advantage”, which pulls together the key concepts from his fable books into a nonfiction Management Blueprint format.
Lencioni makes the case that although most CEOs are tweaking the dial to make their businesses “smarter,” they are missing a much higher leverage opportunity, which is to make their organization “healthier.” He writes: “The health of an organization provides context for strategy, finance, marketing
and technology, which is why it is the single biggest factor determining an organization’s success.”
According to Lencioni, three inherent biases against focusing on teamwork exist in the business world. The work is “not sophisticated” enough, it’s warm and fuzzy stuff; it’s not an adrenaline-inducing activity; and progress in team-health building is hard to measure.
Business leaders often ask: “What is the financial impact really of having a more cohesive leadership team? How can we justify to the board or even to ourselves spending time on it?”
Lencioni identifies four disciplines that create organizational health:
- BUILD A COHESIVE LEADERSHIP TEAM. The fish rots from the head down, so the head is where you must start. A leadership team is collectively responsible for achieving a common aim.
- CREATE CLARITY. Answer six critical questions: Why do you exist? How do you behave? What do you do? How will you succeed? What is most important right now? Who must do what?
- OVERCOMMUNICATE CLARITY. You must tell people seven times for them to believe in, internalize, and embrace your mission, values, and strategy.
- REINFORCE CLARITY. Institutionalize your culture without bureaucratizing it. Design human systems to tie operations, culture, and management together.
In One Sentence: Improve your organization by building a cohesive leadership team, clarifying and overcommunicating your vision, and coding it into your people processes.