The Advantage, Enhanced Edition: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business (2012) - Plot & Excerpts
The author details the importance of core, aspirational, and permission to play values.Expanding on his seminal work "Death by Meeting", Lencioni writes of the four types of meeting: daily check in, weekly staff meeting (see below), strategic/ad hoc working meeting, and quarterly review. This meeting framework is the most commonly adopted piece of consulting practice from his work experiences.How to avoid meeting stew: everyone takes 30 seconds to detail top two or three objectives for the period. "What is most important right now?" Spend ten minutes to do real time agenda. Standing agenda item: scorecard for group's top priorities: green, yellow, or red. Agenda will likely focus on items that are red or orange. Avoids sitting through discussion of things that everyone knows are not important to strategic anchors, mission, or clarity.Ad hoc or strategical meeting. Dig into critical issues that have long time impact or may take considerable effort to resolve.Problem with case studies is that they are not real and leave MBA students wanting to solve real issues. Employees are tense and want to solve problems--there is a reason that they are in their industry/position. Do not truncate these opportunities by assuming that meetings are inherently are bad. Leadership teams need to separate tactical conversations from strategical ones. Cannot solve both during a single meeting.Quarterly offsite reviews. Nothing more than expensive and extended staff meeting. Should be unique and focused. Activities should be reviewing strategic anchors and thematic goals, cohesiveness, threats to morale, clarity, communications, systems, etc. Can leave to consultant for facilitation (though this seems self serving to Lencioni and his Table Group consultants!).Leader's first priority is to allow others to execute on priorities. This should be the focus of meetings. Leaders spend unnecessary time every day dealing with issues that result from poorly run meetings. This book was just ok. I felt like the style used in the other books (telling a fable and then drawing a conclusion) was much better and helped me to remember what was being said. There were lots of examples of the points being made.Since I borrowed this book from the library, I'll take my notes here:Four Disciplines 1. Build a cohesive leadership team Building Trust Mastering Conflict Achieving Commitment Embracing Accountability Focusing on Results 2. Create clarity Why do we exist? How do we behave? What do we do? How will we succeed? What is most important, right now? Who must do what? 3. Over-communicate clarity 4. Reinforce clarityBook ends with a section on great meetings - made me think of his Death by Meeting book.
What do You think about The Advantage, Enhanced Edition: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business (2012)?
If you lead anyone, manage anyone, or run anything and don't read this book, well you're an idiot.
—gabbehhh
Big fan of this author. Easy read, but not simple. Great vignettes throughout. Recommended
—Trav
Pretty straight forward. We'll see if it makes a sustainable difference at work.
—lollies
Best book I've read on organizational leadership.
—Joelle
