The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business

by Patrick Lencioni

CHECKLIST FOR ORGANIZATIONAL HEALTH Members of a leadership team can gain a general sense of their organization’s health and, more important, identify specific opportunities for improvement by completing the following checklist. Discipline 1: Build a Cohesive Leadership Team The leadership team is small enough (three to ten people) to be effective. Members of the team trust one another and can be genuinely vulnerable with each other. Team members regularly engage in productive, unfiltered conflict around important issues. The team leaves meetings with clear-cut, active, and specific agreements around decisions. Team members hold one another accountable to commitments and behaviors. Members of the leadership team are focused on team number one. They put the collective priorities and needs of the larger organization ahead of their own departments. Discipline 2: Create Clarity Members of the leadership team know, agree on, and are passionate about the reason that the organization exists. The leadership team has clarified and embraced a small, specific set of behavioral values. Leaders are clear and aligned around a strategy that helps them define success and differentiate from competitors. The leadership team has a clear, current goal around which they rally. They feel a collective sense of ownership for that goal. Members of the leadership team understand one another’s roles and responsibilities. They are comfortable asking questions about one another’s work. The elements of...