Patrick M. LencioniThe Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business

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 Team2) Create Clarity3) Overcommunicate Clarity4) Reinforce ClarityIs 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.

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 Last2) 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.