The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business

by Patrick Lencioni

that at the end of every meeting, with the exception of the daily check-ins, team members must stop and clarify what they’ve agreed to and what they will go back and communicate to their teams.

There is just no escaping the fact that 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.

they must be the first to do the hardest things, like demonstrating vulnerability, provoking conflict, confronting people about their behavior, or calling their direct reports out when they’re putting themselves ahead of the team.

initial off-site, a couple of days away from the office—productive, intense, non-touchy-feely days—working on the first two disciplines of building team cohesion and creating clarity.

After that initial off-site, the team will need to put together a playbook,

the answers fully agreed on by the team, the next step will be to properly communicate it to the rest of the organization.

finally, the leadership team will need to spend time, probably a fair amount of time, designing systems to reinforce the information from the playbook by embedding it into every process that involves people.

A rigid, one-size-fits-all approach usually ends up fitting no one and makes it likely that teams will abandon a program because it becomes too onerous.

the impact of organizational health goes far beyond the walls of a company, extending to customers and vendors, even to spouses and children.