Synopses & Reviews
There is a competitive advantage out there, arguably more powerful than any other. Is it superior strategy? Faster innovation? Smarter employees? No,
New York Times best-selling author, Patrick Lencioni, argues that the seminal difference between successful companies and mediocre ones has little to do with what they know and how smart they are and more to do with how healthy they are. In this book, Lencioni brings together his vast experience and many of the themes cultivated in his other best-selling books and delivers a first: a cohesive and comprehensive exploration of the unique advantage organizational health provides.
Simply put, an organization is healthy when it is whole, consistent and complete, when its management, operations and culture are unified. Healthy organizations outperform their counterparts, are free of politics and confusion and provide an environment where star performers never want to leave. Lencioni’s first non-fiction book provides leaders with a groundbreaking, approachable model for achieving organizational health—complete with stories, tips and anecdotes from his experiences consulting to some of the nation’s leading organizations. In this age of informational ubiquity and nano-second change, it is no longer enough to build a competitive advantage based on intelligence alone. The Advantage provides a foundational construct for conducting business in a new way—one that maximizes human potential and aligns the organization around a common set of principles.
Review
Consulting executive Lencioni (The Five Dysfunctions of a Team) has an answer for floundering businesses—aim for organizational health. In other words, businesses that are whole, consistent, and complete, with complementary management, operations, strategy, and culture. Today, the vast majority of organizations have more than enough intelligence, experience, and knowledge to be successful. Organizational health is neither sexy nor quantifiable, which is why more people don't take advantage. However, improved health will not only create a competitive advantage and better bottom line, it will boost morale. Lencioni covers four steps to health: build a cohesive leadership team, create clarity, overcommunicate clarity, and reinforce clarity. Through examples of his own experiences and others', he addresses the behaviors of a cohesive team, peer-to-peer accountability, office politics and bureaucracy and strategy, and how all organizations should strive to make people's lives better. This smart, pithy, and practical guide is a must-read for executives and other businesspeople who need to get their proverbial ducks back in a row. (Apr.) (Publishers Weekly, 1/16/12)
Synopsis
Bestselling author Patrick Lencioni's first comprehensive nonfiction book for creating and sustaining vibrant organizationsFinally, in one resource, The Healthy Organization brings together all of the critical themes of Patrick Lencioni's other bestselling books into a cohesive exploration of the key component for long lasting success: organizational health. He shows what it means for an organization to be "healthy", why it's essential, and reveals how leaders can intentionally make it happen. Unlike his previous books, this book does not contain a fictional fable, but it does maintain his easy-to-read and entertaining style, plus a variety of illustrative examples, to take the reader step-by-step through the key components of organizational health.
- Key include: align leaders around a few critical questions; get all employees to buy into the organizations answers to these questions; leader must build a cohesive team at the top
- Offers solid guidance for creating and sustaining a healthy organization
- Written by Patrick Lencioni the author of the classic New York Times bestseller The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
This important book explains that organizational health is be the most enduring and untapped competitive advantage in the market today, and shows the concrete steps for achievement.
Synopsis
"Organizational health will one day surpass all other disciplines in business as the greatest opportunity for improvement and competitive advantage."
This is the promise of The Advantage, Patrick Lencioni's bold manifesto about the most unexploited opportunity in modern business. In his immensely readable and accessible style, Lencioni makes the case that there is no better way to achieve profound improvement in an organization than by attacking the root causes of dysfunction, politics, and confusion.
While too many leaders are still limiting their search for advantage to conventional and largely exhausted areas like marketing, strategy, and technology, Lencioni demonstrates that there is an untapped gold mine sitting right beneath them. Instead of trying to become smarter, he asserts that leaders and organizations need to shift their focus to becoming healthier, allowing them to tap into the more-than-sufficient intelligence and expertise they already have.
The author of numerous best-selling business fables including The Five Dysfunctions of a Team and Death by Meeting, Lencioni here draws upon his twenty years of writing, field research, and executive consulting to some of the world's leading organizations. He combines real-world stories and anecdotes with practical, actionable advice to create a work that is at once a great read and an invaluable, hands-on tool. The result is, without a doubt, Lencioni's most comprehensive, significant, and essential work to date.
Synopsis
Praise for The Advantage"The Advantage has more common sense in its 200 pages than I have ever found in a business book. A must-read."
—Colleen Barrett, president emeritus, Southwest Airlines Co.; coauthor, Lead with LUV
"Here is the next business classic. Even the best leaders will read this and wonder, 'Why aren't we already doing this?'"
—Enrique Salem, president and CEO, Symantec
"We are doing what most said could not be done in a down economy—start and exponentially grow a business. Using Lencioni's model for organizational health is an everyday choice and a way of life for our company."
—Liz Townsend, COO, My Fit Foods
"For more than a decade I've been using Lencioni's approach to run the departments I lead, and it has never failed me."
—Rick Friedel, vice president, AT&T Service Management
"Our teams and leaders have really embraced Lencioni's methodology. We've put these ideas into practice and we're experiencing the results that prove it works."
—David Gordon, COO, The Cheesecake Factory
"In The Advantage, Lencioni cuts through the corporate 'bull' that creates a culture of stonewalling and feet-dragging, and shows leaders at every level how to build up a culture of productivity and communication."
—Dave Ramsey, New York Times best-selling author and nationally syndicated radio talk show host
Synopsis
The enhanced edition includes over 30 minutes of video featuring author Patrick Lencioni exploring the book's concepts more in-depth and providing new illustrative stories. It also includes color PDFs of many of the book's models, tools, and assessments.
About the Author
Patrick M. Lencioni is founder and president of The Table Group, a management consulting firm specializing in organizational health and executive team development. As a consultant and keynote speaker, he has worked with thousands of senior executives in organizations ranging from Fortune 500 and mid-size companies to start-ups and nonprofits. Lencioni is the author of nine business books with over three million copies sold worldwide.
He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and four boys.
Table of Contents
Introduction xv
The Case for Organizational Health 1
The Four Disciplines Model 15
Discipline 1: Build a Cohesive Leadership Team 19
Discipline 2: Create Clarity 73
Discipline 3: Overcommunicate Clarity 141
Discipline 4: Reinforce Clarity 153
The Centrality of Great Meetings 173
Seizing the Advantage 189
Checklist for Organizational Health 195
More Resources 199
Notes 201
Acknowledgments 203
About the Author 205
Index 207