Showing posts with label Book Morsel. Show all posts
Book Morsel - The Advantage (Patrick Lencioni)
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
Book Morsel - Great by Choice (Jim Collins)
Great By Choice (by Jim Collins)
Premise: Some people and companies (termed 10Xers) thrive in uncertainty, even chaos and others do not. Why?
Factors for Success
Fanatic Discipline - The most successful people (and organizations) demonstrate a consistency of action, values, long-term goals, performance standards and methods, over time. Often a LONG period of time.
Empirical Creativity - Their innovation is based on data; not blind hope and optimism. They often forego conventional wisdom, unless the data supports it. They rely on direct observation and practical experimentation.
Productive Paranoia - They are always scanning the environment for what could go wrong. They are hyper-vigilant in good times as well as bad. AND they prepare for those “what-ifs” by storing away strong reserves to buffer adverse conditions.
Level 5 Ambition - They are leaders with inspiring standards as opposed to inspiring personality. They have a deeply inspiring form of ambition: 10xers channel their ego and intensity into something larger and more enduring than themselves.
Key Themes
20 Mile March - Story of two men racing to South Pole with very different approaches. Consistency is crucial regardless the environment (internal or external). It requires hitting specified performance markers with great consistency over a long period of time. It requires two distinct types of discomfort, delivering high performance in difficult times and holding back in good times.
Fire Bullets, then Cannonballs - 10X companies, though innovative, often are not the most innovative in their industry. Their goal is to be "innovative enough" by making calibrated risks. They take lots of little risks at a low cost (bullets). If they show promise, they calibrate by firing more targeted bullets. If sufficient empirical evidence for success exists, they then fire cannonballs by making the big investment.
Productive Paranoia; Leading above the Death Line - To thrive, you must maintain a productive paranoia about what could go wrong and prepare for those possibilities by ensuring that you have reserves and buffers to overcome unexpected events and back luck, before they happen. Manage your risk, 10Xers took less risk than comparison organizations. You must also "zoom out" to the big picture (changing environment), then "zoom in" with incredible focus on execution. Finally, you must understand time-based risk: how much time do you have? Be hyper-vigilant to recognize risks early. Fast decisions are not necessarily best decisions. Use the time you have to make a deliberate fact-based decision. (Go slow when you can, fast when you must).
SMaC (Specific, Methodical, and Consistent recipe for success) - This is the operating code for turning strategic concepts into reality; a set of practices that successful people and companies consistently follow. It forces order amidst chaos. However, it’s not the existence the recipe that is most important, it is the fanatic discipline to follow it. The signature of mediocrity is chronic inconsistency.
Return on Luck - All organizations face both positive and negative “luck.” The key differentiator to success is not the amount of one type or the other. The key differentiator is the response to luck; rather the degree to which we leverage the good or mitigate the bad. (Return on Luck – ROL) .
For more reading, check out the longer, more details book summary: Book Summary - Good to Great
Recommendation: This is a great book to own - here is the link to it on Amazon: http://ow.ly/BmobW
Tag :
Book Morsel,
Leadership
