The Advantage (by Patrick Lencioni)
Premise: The greatest single advantage any company can achieve is organizational health, but a lot of companies don't focus on it. Here are the core essentials.
Discipline 1 – Build a Cohesive Leadership Team
If an organization is led by a team that is not behaviorally unified, there is no chance it will become healthy.
To build trust, you must get to know each other, not just professionally, but your stories. Where are you coming from? What drives you? How are you wired. Spend time going deeper than the surface.
You must also master conflict as a time. Some teams avoid conflict others. Others wage gorilla warfare. Healthy teams have healthy conflict. They are "all in", deeply engaged, but focused on the issues and not each other.
Strong teams achieve commitment. Once they've debated the issue, they commit to next steps and agree on who is responsible for what. They embrace accountability and focus on results.
Discipline 2 – Create Clarity
Alignment is about creating so much clarity that there is as little room as possible for confusion, disorder, and infighting
1.) Why do we exist? (The heart of what you do - grand and inspirational)
2.) How do we behave? (Your core values - things you are willing to take to far and are intolerant of those who don't follow them)
3.) What do we do? (a simple description of what the organization actual does)
4.) How will we succeed? (what intentional decisions (anchors) will give you the best chance to succeed and differentiate from your competitors?
5.) What is Most Important, Right Now? (what is your top priority right now?)
6.) Who Must Do What? (Ensure there is clarity on who is responsible for what by when.)
Discipline 3 – Over-communicate Clarity
People are skeptical about what they’re being told unless they hear it consistently over time.
Leaders often confuse the mere transfer of information to the audience’s ability to understand, internalize, and embrace what is being communicated. After leadership has agreed, those leaders need to meet with their direct team and have those teams meet with their direct team to cascade information/agreements quickly (24 hours).
Discipline 4 – Reinforce Clarity
Make sure that human systems – every process that involved people – from hiring and people management to training and compensation, is designed to reinforce the answers to the questions.
For more reading, check out the longer, more details book summary: Book Summary - The Advantage
Recommendation: This is a great book to own - here is the link to it on Amazon: The Advantage
