The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business (J-B Lencioni Series)

The realization of the importance of organizational health is coming, and Patrick Lencioni's new book, The Advantage is leading the way. Lencioni is one of my favorite writers, his ability to weave together a story/parable that connects and then lay out principles that transform is always a winning recipe. Just one thing with The Advantage, no parable, just an incredible combination of teaching in all his books to lay not only why organizational health trumps everything else in business (and other organizations too), but even more how to build such organizational health in your organization. Yes, there are incredible stories of how these principles have worked in his organizational life as well as those he has consulted (with names changed of course to protect both the guilty and the innocent). It's a great advantage of the book -- not just a great story in theory, but great stories gathered together from actual life experiences. The opening line of chapter 1 captures the premise of the book, "The single greatest advantage any company can achieve is organizational health. Yet it is ignored by most leaders even though it is simple, free, and available to everyone who wants it." In pursuing such organizational health, Lencioni works through a 4 disciplines model: DISCIPLINE 1. Build a cohesive leadership team. As Patrick says, "Teamwork is not a virtue, it's a choice." He defines a leadership team as "a small group of people who are collectively responsible for achieving a common objective for their organization." Moving building from theory to practice builds on 5 behaviors: Trust, Mastering Conflict, Achieving Commitment, Embracing Accountability, and Focusing on Results. I remember these from The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team, especially his charge to "step into the conflict" and how much better organizational health became as I learned to step into the conflict and leverage it towards resolution. DISCIPLINE 2. Create clarity. This is my favorite chapter of the book as the not only asks but fleshes out 6 critical questions. Why are they critical? As Patrick writes, "What is new is the realization that none of them can be addressed in isolation; they must be answered together. Failing to achieve alignment around any one of them can prevent an organization from attaining the level of clarity necessary to become healthy." What are the 6 critical questions? So glad you asked ... 1) Why do we exist? Think core purpose as in Jim Collins, Built to Last 2) How do we behave? Core values that are not the generic one size fits all, but the one size that fits us as in the start up company that identified "willing to sweep floors" as one of its core values. Answers to this question also addressed aspirational, accidental and permission-to-play values. 3) What do we do?This should be the easiest to answer, and should be clear and straight forward. 4) How will we succeed? Strategy is involved here, but Lencioni goes deeper speaking of "Strategic Anchors" (3 strategies that provide the context for all decision making). 5) What is most important right now? Answering this one has the most immediate impact. What is the thematic goal? What is the rallying cry that defines the next 3-6 months of focus? 6) Who must do what?Clarity for division of labor and the advantage of teams that bring multiple perspectives to accomplish the thematic goal. The challenge I have learned in leadership is to get everyone on the same page. A cohesive team that hammers out their answers to these 6 questions is on the same page, working out of the same playbook. DISCIPLINE 3. Overcommunicate clarity. When I first saw this, I thought that's a bit repetitive. Exactly. 7 times to be exact. Patrick emphasizes that this is necessary to pass on the clarity, the answers to the 6 questions, the playbook to the organization. The value I discovered in this chapter is a commitment for "the team to leave meetings with clear and specific agreements about what to communicate to their employees." DISCIPLINE 4. Reinforce clarity. Same as discipline 3, I thought this seems repetitive. Reading the chapter I realized this needs to be repeated from new hires to those who needed to be fired, from recognition, compensation and reward. Clarity, the playbook, the 6 questions, the cohesive commitment builds organizational health. After laying out the case for the 4 disciplines, Patrick moves on to the advantage of great meetings. Having applied the truths of Death by Meeting to my own leadership team meetings, they do produce greater organizational health and engagement. It's my next step with this book to hammer out our answers to the 6 questions, to build our own playbook. We have learned to focus our meetings and have found them to provide greater productivity. The greatest challenge that I picked up from the book is when Patrick writes, "the single biggest factor determining whether an organization is going to get healthier -- or not -- is the genuine commitment and active involvement of the person in charge." That's why I give The Advantage 5 out of 5 stars. It left me not only wanting to be a better leader of a great organization, but laid out practical principles for making that happen.

Leaders who read my book reviews know I'm on a perpetual trek (or is it a treadmill?) to find gold in them thar hills--culminating in my Top-10 books of the year list. I just found one--and it will take a rare gem to knock this one off its current perch as my Number One pick of 2012. Any new book by Patrick Lencioni is worth the read, but this treasure--published just this month and already on the Wall Street Journal's Top-10 business books list--is in a class by itself. Lencioni says that "bad meetings are the birthplace of unhealthy organizations and good meetings are the origin of cohesion, clarity and communication." He adds, "If someone were to offer me one single piece of evidence to evaluate the health of an organization, I would not ask to see its financial statements, review its product line, or even talk to its employees or customers: I would want to observe the leadership team during a meeting." And he says all of this on page 173, in his next to last chapter, "The Centrality of Great Meetings." I couldn't agree more. As Lencioni points out--your meetings are a barometer of everything else. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Why is this such a spectacular book? What moves it from fad-of-the-quarter, ho-hum pablum, to YOU MUST BUY THIS TODAY for every person on your senior team? I ordered 24 copies for a CEO Dialogues roundtable last week--after reading just the first 50 pages. I thought to myself, "These 50 pages are so transformational--if teams apply the wisdom with discipline and desire--it doesn't matter if the other 150 pages are even readable." Lencioni, who has sold more than three million business "fables," calls this book a "comprehensive, practical guide"--and it is. His goal was to bring all of the ideas from his eight books and consulting practice under the roof of one book--and he did. This one, especially, is brilliant. "The single greatest advantage any company can achieve," says this plain-speaking author/consultant (blessed with wit and wisdom) "is organizational health. Yet it is ignored by most leaders even though it is simple, free and available to anyone who wants it." He builds his case quickly--not with fables this time but with real life peeks behind unnamed company closed doors. (Not all business or nonprofit/church leaders have it together, we soon learn.) His model for organizational health is centered on four disciplines: 1) Build a Cohesive Leadership Team 2) Create Clarity 3) Overcommunicate Clarity 4) Reinforce Clarity Is this just another yada, yada, yada or a big pile of nada, nada, nada? Nope. It is so simple and practical, I think Lencioni was a bit embarrassed to put so many cookies on the bottom shelf. But that's what sets this apart from all the other books in recent years--it's a comprehensive approach that any team can implement. And it's so simple--it may well be the death knell for us consultant types. (Buy the book and you won't need us anymore!) In what I term the "Superman Syndrome," Peter Drucker said "No institution can possibly survive if it needs geniuses or supermen to manage it. It must be organized in such a way as to be able to get along under a leadership composed of average human beings." Thus Lencioni skillfully delivers exceptional goods--for all of us average players. Organizational health is like a family, comments Lencioni. "If the parents' relationship is dysfunctional, the family will be too." He adds, "Teamwork is not a virtue. It is a choice--and a strategic one." He paints the picture of what healthy teams look like, starting with the basics: size of teams, specific agendas when the team meets, and frequency and types of team meetings and staff meetings. His five team behaviors (think of a pyramid from the ground up) of Trust, Conflict, Commitment, Accountability and Results--are defined and explained in practical, practical ways in the first 70 pages. He writes, "The ultimate point of building greater trust, conflict, commitment and accountability is one thing: the achievement of results. That seems obvious, but as it turns out, one of the greatest challenges to team success is the inattention to results." (Three cheers for the Results Bucket!) "Discipline 2: Create Clarity" is really a short-course in strategic planning without all the buzz words. His page on "BLATHER" is hilarious. "Though I can't be sure, I suspect that at some point about thirty years ago a cleverly sadistic and antibusiness consultant decided that the best way to screw up companies was to convince them that what they needed was a convoluted, jargon, and all-encompassing declaration of intent." (Think: vision and mission statements!) I gotta end this review--but, really, I haven't even enticed you to the deep end of the pool yet. You MUST buy this book and read about: The Two-Headed CEO, the six key questions to create clarity, The Playbook (a few pages, on the desk and in every meeting), Cascading Communication, Performance Management ("Healthy organizations believe that performance management is almost exclusively about eliminating confusion."), The Price of Passivity, Behaviors Versus Measurables, The Universal Challenge of Peer Accountability, and Chief Reminder Officer.

I'll be blunt: I am generally not a big fan of Lencioni's format or overall way of thinking about business. So 4 stars for me is a big deal. I think he got a lot of things right in this book, first of which is that he didn't tell a contrived, childish story that insults the intelligence of the reader, and instead talks to us in plain language interspersed with concrete, real-world examples. Finally. What is the advantage? He defines it as a "healthy organization," which consists, basically, of systems that enforce good management practices based in psychology and science, clear and decisive values and purpose, and a well-oiled organizational machine for meetings and communication. This is—as he says—pretty simple stuff to understand, but it all needs to be done together to be effective, lest any one part short-circuit any other. Correct. What else he got right: - The overall premise. With improvement of people management, and a few easy-to-understand, basic concepts done well, vast improvement is possible. - Most of the psychology of teams, individuals, and dysfunctions thereof. Especially in noting Attribution bias. - Framing of performance reviews as a process for improvement, not as a means for, well, anything else. - The idea that no one part, on its own, is the key to success—that you must look at the health of the whole organization. - The clear outline of purpose, values, and alignment, and the no-nonsense discussion of the humanity thereof. Spot on. Shaky ground (one star deducted for these purposes primarily). - The whole discussion of Accountability. I'll write a bit about this, since it's a big misstep, even though few understand why. One gets the impression that this is an old concept of his that he hasn't fully developed, and that even he, the master of his own book, is uncomfortable with the premise. He should trust his own instincts! Accountability is the wrong concept, and in the entire chapter he wavers back and forth between various definitions and examples that don't support what he's saying and sometimes have nothing to do with the concept at all. What's the right way to look at accountability? Forget the concept entirely. Toss it in the trash. It's a useless concept grounded in ancient management practices of command-and-control, founded in the idea that punishment for sub-par work is the best way to motivate people. This is an idea that Lencioni himself disproves later on in the book, when he talks about performance management—the goal is always to improve, not to blame or punish, and Accountability ruins the trust necessary to improve. It conflicts with the rest of his model, and it's out of place because of it. I have a feeling the inconsistency will dawn on him soon, as it's clear from the rest of his model that he's very close to the whole deal. - The—it's hard to describe—hubris, self-importance, the lack of humility shown in the whole model and his presentation of it. What he's landed on here is not all that new or original, as he implies it is. It's the same core concept that Deming landed on, and Ackoff, and Juran, and a few others. It contains elements of Lean management, of the Toyota way, of Peter Scholte's interpretation of Deming, and of many concepts from other systems thinkers and organizational modelers that have—albeit perhaps less accessibly—rounded out the same model that Lencioni has. He mentions none of them. He gives the impression that he's landed on all of these concepts all by himself, which is either true (someone observing reality can reach the same conclusions), or demonstrates either ignorance (unlikely) intentional simplification (perhaps) or willful disregard for the great management thinkers who came before him. No matter how you slice it, it's irritating. As much as those minor flaws annoy me, this is, overall, a mostly right-side-up view of organizations and how to work them, with a whole lot of positive ways of thinking that would help many a company work better and, as W. Edwards Deming said, to find "joy in work" that is the true indicator of a healthy company. Managers and leaders would do well to read this and take its concepts to heart. It is, overall, a good intro to a series of learnings on the path to a more enlightened organization. Your next reads, (the Big Kids' Bikes, if you will): - The Leader's Handbook: Making Things Happen, Getting Things Done (absolutely essential) - Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World (an alternative model, with much more insight and innovative thought) - The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from the World's Greatest Manufacturer (how to really drive a "healthy organization" with a systems view) - Dr. Deming: The American who Taught the Japanese About Quality (a deep dive on Deming, who is the true father of the "holistic organization" systemic health that Lencioni talks about) - Thinking in Systems: A Primer (how to think about organizational—and any other—systems, in concrete and useful terms) This is the right way to proceed. Get started with Lencioni if you like his style, and don't stop there. Good luck.

The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business By Patrick Lencioni Patrick Lencioni is a proven master of the business fable--a short story that provides a lesson that can be applied to the business world. His numerous bestsellers, "The Five Dysfunctions of a Team," "Death by Meeting," and "Silos, Politics and Turf Wars," among others, each focus on providing the reader with a lesson on a particular business topic. In his latest book, "The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business," Lencioni pulls together the many separate themes of his previous works and weaves them into a comprehensive business theory. And despite his expertise as a storyteller, in this book he chooses not to use the business fable. Perhaps the fable format is not extensive enough to meet his needs. Whatever the reason, the insight and strength of this book prove that he made the right choice. The result is first-rate writing that supports discerning insights about the essentials factors for business success. The opening line in the first chapter captures the premise of the book, "The single greatest advantage any company can achieve is organizational health. Yet it is ignored by most leaders even though it is simple, free, and available to everyone who wants it." Organizational health is readily accessible, the author argues, but most organizations choose to be smart rather than healthy. Smart may include a great marketing plan and cutting edge technology. It focuses on "tweaking the dials," in these and other areas, rather than on overall health of the organization. Studying spreadsheets and financial statements is relatively safe, Lencioni suggests, unlike the messier, unpredictable ways of establishing the health of the organization. The healthy organization is the victim of three strong biases: The Sophistication Bias (organizations often ignore that which is simple and straightforward); The Adrenaline Bias (most leaders suffer from chronic adrenaline addiction, the stress rush of fighting fires every day); and The Quantification Bias (the difficulty of measuring it in financial terms). Lencioni suggests there may be a fourth reason for such bias: no one has ever presented it as a simple, integrated discipline. In doing so for the first time, the author believes that it is the practice that will surpass all other disciplines in creating competitive advantage. This foremost advantage, organizational health, is about integrity, Lencioni says. Integrity in this context is defined as an organization that is whole, consistent and complete, "when its management, operations, strategy, and culture fit together and make sense." Health can be recognized by reading the signs within an organization that include, minimal politics, low confusion, strong morale, high productivity and very low turnover. The author suggests an organization becomes healthy in much the same way as a couple builds a strong marriage or family--"it's a messy process." It involves doing several things at once. He outlines four disciplines to do this: * Discipline 1: Build a Cohesive Team. The leaders of any group, whether a church, school, or international corporation must build trust, master conflict, achieve commitment, embrace accountability and focus on results. "Teamwork is not a virtue," Lencioni says. "It's a choice." * Discipline 2: Create Clarity. Six questions help to clarify, including, "why do we exist? What do we do? Who does what? "What is new is the realization that none of them can be addressed in isolation; they must be answered together," the author says. "Failing to achieve alignment around any one of them can prevent an organization from attaining the level of clarity necessary to become healthy." * Discipline 3: Overcommunicate Clarity. Clearly, repeatedly and enthusiastically give the answers created to help clarify. There is no such thing as too much communication. * Discipline 4: Reinforce Clarity. Critical systems must be implemented to reinforce clarity in every process. Every policy and program should be designed to remind employees what is really important. The book also contains practical structures gathered from Lencioni's previous books. For effective communications, for example, a healthy organization deals in daily check-ins, weekly tactical staff meetings, monthly strategic meetings, and offsite meetings. The author's enthusiasm is more than compelling; it is contagious. "Is this model foolproof?" he asks about the healthy organization. "Pretty much," is the response. If leaders are aligned around a common set of answers, communicate those answers repeatedly, put effective processes into place that reinforce them--they effectively "create an environment in which success is almost impossible to prevent. Really." That would indeed be a healthy organization.

I first discovered Patrick Lencioni via a moving foreword that he wrote for another great business book called Emotional Intelligence 2.0 . Since then I've read everything that Lencioni has put out and this book may very well be his best book yet. For those of you who love the parable style, be warned this book is not a parable. However, that's what makes it even better than the rest. Lencioni is bursting with wisdom, and that means all 240 pages are overflowing with great ideas for how to run a company well. It's refreshing for him to just come right out and say it, and what he has to say is both brilliant and practical. The book teaches the four disciplines in great detail (enough that you learn just how to apply each in your organization). You can literally read the book as a group and get started making your company healthy. The four disciplines are: DISCIPLINE 1: BUILD A COHESIVE LEADERSHIP TEAM An organization simply cannot be healthy if the people who are chartered with running it are not behaviorally cohesive in five fundamental ways. In any kind of organization, from a corporation to a department within that corporation, from a small company, to a church or school, dysfunction and lack of cohesion at the top inevitably lead to a lack of health throughout. DISCIPLINE 2: CREATE CLARITY In addition to being cohesive, the leadership team of a healthy organization must be intellectually aligned and committed to the same answers to six simple but critical questions. DISCIPLINE 3: OVERCOMMUNICATE CLARITY Once a leadership team has established behavioral cohesion and created clarity around the answers to those questions, it must then communicate those answers to employees clearly, repeatedly, enthusiastically, and repeatedly (not a typo). There is no such thing as too much communication. DISCIPLINE 4: REINFORCE CLARITY In order for an organization to remain healthy over time, its leaders must establish a few, critical nonbureaucratic systems to reinforce clarity in every process that involves people. Every policy, every program, every activity should be designed to remind employees what is really most important. This book is a five star business book. Give it a read. You won't be disappointed.

Great holistic book that incorporates many of the core concepts from his other books and organizes them into a simple way to implement. Got a lot of practical insights I can apply right away.

Anything Patrick Lencioni writes, I'm going to read. His latest book 'The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business was no different. While not a fable like his other books, this one might be his best one. Lencioni tackles the topic of organizational health, which has huge implications for churches as well. He lays out 4 disciplines of healthy organizations: Build a cohesive leadership team, Create clarity, Over-communicate clarity, and Reinforce clarity. Here's a little description of each one: Build a cohesive leadership team An organization simply cannot be healthy if the people who are chartered with running it are not behaviorally cohesive in five fundamental ways. In any kind of organization, from a corporation to a department within that corporation, from a small, entrepreneurial company to a church or a school, dysfunction and lack of cohesion at the top inevitably lead to a lack of health throughout. Create clarity In addition to being behaviorally cohesive, the leadership team of a healthy organization must be intellectually aligned and committed to the same answers to six simple but critical questions. There can be no daylight between leaders around these fundamental issues. Over-communicate clarity Once a leadership team has established behavioral cohesion and created clarity around the answers to those questions, it must then communicate those answers to employees clearly, repeatedly, enthusiastically, and repeatedly (that's not a typo). When it comes to reinforcing clarity, there is no such thing as too much communication. Reinforce clarity In order for an organization to remain healthy over time, its leaders must establish a few critical, non bureaucratic systems to reinforce clarity in every process that involves people. Every policy, every program, every activity should be designed to remind employees what is really most important. Pretty simple, but something very few organizations achieve. Here are a few things that jumped out in reading the book: -The health of an organization provides the context for strategy, finance, marketing, technology, and everything else that happens within it, which is why it is the single greatest factor determining an organization's success. More than talent. More than knowledge. More than innovation. -Any organization that really wants to maximize its success must come to embody two basic qualities: it must be smart, and it must be healthy. -The vast majority of organizations today have more than enough intelligence, expertise, and knowledge to be successful. What they lack is organizational health. -The seminal difference between successful companies and mediocre or unsuccessful ones has little, if anything, to do with what they know or how smart they are; it has everything to do with how healthy they are. -A good way to look at organizational health - and one that executives seem to respond to readily - is to see it as the multiplier of intelligence. -If people don't weight in, they can't buy in. -Too many leaders seem to have a greater affinity for and loyalty to the department they lead rather than the team they're a member of and the organization they are supposed to be collectively serving. -There is no getting around the fact that the only measure of a great team - or a great organization - is whether it accomplishes what it sets out to accomplish. -Within the context of making an organization healthy, alignment is about creating so much clarity that there is a little room as possible for confusion, disorder and infighting to set in. -Organizations learn by making decisions, even bad ones. By being decisive, leaders allow themselves to get clear, immediate data from their actions. -Successful, enduring organizations understand the fundamental reason they were founded and why they exist, and they stay true to that reason. -Every organization, if it wants to create a sense of alignment and focus, must have a single top priority within a given period of time. -Employees won't believe what leaders are communicating to them until they've heard it seven times. -People are skeptical about what they're being told unless they hear it consistently over time. -Great leaders see themselves as Chief Reminding Officer as much as anything else. Their top two priorities are to set the direction of the organization and then to ensure that people are reminded of it on a regular basis. -Messaging is not so much an intellectual process as an emotional one. -Bringing the right people into an organization, and keeping the wrong ones out, is as important as any activity that a leadership team must oversee. -When leaders fail to tell employees that they're doing a great job, they might as well be taking money out of their pockets and throwing it into a fire, because they are wasting opportunities to give people the recognition they crave more than anything else. Overall, this was one of the more helpful books I've, easily the best I've read on organizational health. Definitely one worth picking up if you are a leader.

Unlike most of Lencioni's books this is not a parable. Instead it draws together the principles presented in his books into a cohesive strategy for implementing organizational health. At slightly less than 200 pages, it is an easy read, yet full of the kind of information that can enhance productivity at the same time avoiding the dysfunctions which seem to plague most businesses. I am constantly amazed that with this kind of excellent material available there are so many CEOs whose grasp of leadership is either poor or nonexistent . . . and I wonder how they came to their position to begin with and somehow manage to keep it in spite of such poor leadership? Ahhhh well, I think some things are beyond my powers of comprehension. In Advantage, Lencioni identifies four core disciplines for a healthy, productive organization: 1. Build a Cohesive Leadership Team 2. Create Clarity 3. Over communicate Clarity 4. Reinforce Clarity He states throughout the book that the concepts he is presenting are not that complex, but are too often ignored by organizational leaders as being somehow beneath them. I have experienced this and know his observation to be true. I've included a few quotes from the book which I found insightful/helpful: "...the seminal difference between successful companies and mediocre or unsuccessful ones has little, if anything, to do with what they know or how smart they are: it has everything to do with how healthy they are." p. 8,9 "the only reason that a person should be on a team is that she represents a key part of the organization or brings truly critical talent or insight to the table." p. 24 "When leaders preach teamwork but exclusively reward individual achievement, they are confusing their people and creating an obstacle to true team behavior." p. 26 "...peer-to-peer accountability is the primary and most effective source of accountability on the leadership team of a healthy organization." p. 54 "Firing someone is not necessarily a sign of accountability, but is often the last act of cowardice for a leader who doesn't know how or isn't willing to hold people accountable. At its core accountability is about having the courage to confront someone about their deficiencies and then to stand in the moment and deal with their reaction, which may not be pleasant. It is a selfless act, one rooted in a word that I don't use lightly in a business book: love."p. 57 "...the only measure of a great team -- or a great organization - is whether it accomplishes what it sets out to accomplish." "See, no matter how good a leadership team feels about itself, and how noble its mission might be, if the organization it leads rarely achieves its goals, then, by definition, it's simply not a good team." p. 65 "...healthy, alignment is about creating so much clarity that there is as little room as possible for confusion, disorder, and infighting to set in." p. 73,74 "there is probably no greater frustration for employees than having to constantly navigate the politics and confusion caused by leaders who are misaligned." p. 75 "Once an organization successfully identifies and describes its core values and separates them from other kinds, it must then do its best to be intolerant of violations of those values. It must ensure that every activity it undertakes, every employee it hires, and every policy it enacts reflects those core values. Few organizations actually take this important step, instead allowing their values to be minimized as mere idealism." p. 101 "Many leadership teams struggle with not wanting to walk away from opportunities that seem basically good and easily justifiable outside the context of having a strategy, but which would distract the organization and pull it away from its stated intent." p. 117 "On a cohesive team, leaders are not there simply to represent the departments that they lead and manage but rather to solve problems that stand in the way of achieving success for the whole organization." p. 123 "...almost no employees willingly leave an organization where they are getting the levels of gratitude and appreciation that they deserve just to make a little more money, unless, of course, they are so grossly underpaid that they can't justify staying in the job for the sake of their livelihood." p. 168 Using the concept of an organizational playbook Lencioni describes a process which if followed will generate clarity and functional alignment capable of achieving high performance. I will definitely be using this information to guide me in my new position and with my new team. I highly recommend this book and encourage you to add it to your library.

El libro cubre cómo crear un ambiente de confianza para después crear una organización saludable en todos los aspectos cubriendo la cantidad de reuniones, Cómo dar retroalimentación correctamente Y cómo mantener al equipo enfocado en los resultados basado en una cultura de alto rendimiento

Plein de bons conseils qui aident à lever un peu la tête du guidon et reprendre une meilleure trajectoire. Je recommande à tous les DSI, CEO mais aussi à leur staff qui peuvent aussi les influencer.

I was won over by this book. Lencioni reminds me of Marshall Goldsmith ('What Got You Here Won't Get You There' etc.): he offers a great deal of sound, straightforward advice about how to operate successfully within organisations, much of which is in fact based on very insightful observations, based on a lifetime in consultancy, of the way in which people in organisations actually behave and, more importantly, interact. The book's first chapter is a bit of a hard sell. No shame in that. Lencioni sets out to sell us the idea that organisational health is the most important thing in business - no, I mean THE most important thing. Really, really the most important thing. Did you know that organisational health will give your business a competitive advantage? I mean a really HUGE competitive advantage? That organisational health trumps everything else in business? You get the point (you really do!) - the chapter reads like one of those maddeningly successful direct marketing mailshots that has you running up a mental white flag by page three and agreeing that, on reflection, your life has indeed been blighted by the absence of whatever they are selling and that you absolutely must ACT NOW to remedy the situation. But Lencioni soon begins to spell out what a healthy organisation would look like and to set out his action plan for improving the health of any organisation, and I began to be won over. Many books about organisational behaviour offer a brilliant analysis of what is wrong with the organisation and suggest some profound changes that are needed to remedy this, but leave one wondering just how many companies will actually change their behaviour as a result, no matter how compellingly the author has spelled out the advantages. It's not that the new ideas don't make sense, or are not genuinely exciting, it's just that they often require truly fundamental changes to the way that organisations are structured and run. What Lencioni recommends, in contrast, is relatively simple, clearly understandable, and eminently do-able. I found myself recognising all too many of the aspects of unhealthy organisational behaviour but, more importantly, seeing also how Lencioni's recommended solution was sane, practical and achievable. Although Lencioni is not, on the face of it, proposing a radical overhaul of organisational structure, his programme for a healthier way of conducting business would, in fact, have quite profound effects on how organisations are run. Lencioni starts with 'building a cohesive leadership team', and has interesting things to say about how this involves building a high degree of trust among the leadership team, which involves a greater degree of interpersonal reaction than is usually considered necessary or even desirable. Senior teams tend to relate to each other at the 'purely professional' level, representing their own departmental interests, vying with each other for the boss's attention and focussing mainly on achieving their own agenda while looking more brilliant than their colleagues. Exactly, says Lencioni. Teams like this are not learning from each other, and are certainly not working together to achieve the overall objectives of the organisation. To do this, the leadership team need to be more aware of each other's personal strengths and weaknesses, more prepared to engage in constructive criticism and debate and, as a result, to be individually a little more vulnerable than we are usually comfortable with. Lencioni successfully paints an appealing picture of the benefits of a genuinely cohesive leadership team, working together to achieve common objectives, holding other team members accountable, playing to each other's strengths and reminding each other, in an intelligent and constructive way, of their individual weaknesses. And then, of course, the team needs to be clear on exactly what those common objectives are: we need 'clarity'. His recommendation for finding clarity is to answer six fundamental questions: Why do we [the organisation] exist? How do we behave? What do we do? How will we succeed? What is most important right now? Who must do what? It's a good and deceptively simple-looking list. The first three of those questions are actually very hard to answer, and any team that knew and fully agreed on all of the answers would indeed have a considerable advantage over the great majority of their competitors. Lencioni illustrates his points with down-to-earth, recognisable and relevant illustrations from his consulting experience. Having argued for a cohesive leadership team and the need to achieve clarity, the last two points in his four-point action plan seem a little like over-egging the pudding: 'overcommunicate clarity' and 'reinforce clarity'. But the sections addressing these ideas continue to offer sensible, practical suggestions about how to spread a clear understanding of core objectives throughout the organisation and to ensure that the clarity persists. I especially liked Lencini's focus on 'what is the most important thing right now'. It is difficult, but literally invaluable, for organisations to be clear on 'why we exist', 'how we behave' and 'what we do' but even with clarity on these defining ideals, organisations are often still derailed by failing to focus enough on some fundamental issue that threatens their very existence. 'The high point of being a leader in an organisation is wrestling with difficult decisions and situations,' writes Lencioni, while pointing out that, in practice, leadership teams tend to try to deal with such fundamental, life or death business issues far too superficially in a badly structured meeting that is attempting to achieve several other things at the same time. His recommendation for a programme of meetings with different purposes and functions is, again, pragmatic and entirely sane. What, as Lencioni says, could be more exciting than addressing a core business issue in a constructive and focussed 'adhoc topical meeting' with a team of committed colleagues, and without anything else on the agenda but finding a solution to the particular business problem? And how often in business does that actually happen? A deceptively simple and very readable book that offers achievable suggestions for changes to our working practises that would have profound effects on our effectiveness - and on the satisfaction that we get from our working lives. Jonathan Gifford - author of '100 Great Business Leaders'

Um livro de cabeceira para CEOs ou todos aqueles que querem entender como uma organização saudável funciona. Leitura rápida, leve e muito interessante.

Muy buen libro para entender las bases de la salud organizacional, con ejemplos, guía del paso a paso que debe seguirse.