The Advantage

I am a big fan of Patrick Lencioni’s work and this is his best book yet.  The subtitle makes the point:  Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business.  Organizational health is “the advantage,” the main advantage a company can have over its competitors.  Moreover, this advantage is simple, free and available to anyone who wants it.

The first step:  build a cohesive leadership team.  This includes:

• 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.

Second, create clarity for the organization, by answering six questions:

1. Why do we exist?
2. How do we behave?
3. What do we do?
4. How will we succeed?
5. What is most important, right now?
6. Who must do what?

Third, communicate these six answers to employees.  This is done when the leadership team can affirm these statements:

• The leadership team has clearly communicated the six aspects of clarity to all employees.
• Team members regularly remind the people in their departments about those aspects of clarity.
• The team leaves meetings with clear and specific agreements about what to communicate to their employees, and they cascade those messages quickly after meetings.
• Employees are able to accurately articulate the organization’s reason for existence, values, strategic anchors, and goals.

Fourth, reinforce clarity in the company’s structure.  The company’s structure includes the following:

• The organization has a simple way to ensure that new hires are carefully selected based on the company’s values.
• New people are brought into the organization by thoroughly teaching them about the six elements of clarity.
• Managers throughout the organization have a simple, consistent, and nonbureaucratic system for setting goals and reviewing progress with employees.  That system is customized around the elements of clarity.
• Employees who don’t fit the values are managed out of the organization.  Poor performers who do fit the values are given the coaching and assistance they need to succeed.
• Compensation and reward systems are built around the values and goals of the organization.

Finally, Lencioni has a superb chapter on meetings, in which he posits that nothing is more important to a healthy organization than meetings.  He argues that you need four meetings for the leadership team:

Type	Content	Timing
Daily Check-In	Administrative	5-10 minutes
Weekly Staff Adhoc Topical	Tactical Strategic	45-90 minutes 2-4 hours
Quarterly Off-Site Review	Developmental	1-2 days

Meetings, he says, are widely unpopular because they are done so poorly.  Yet, what’s more important than an open, engaging, candid discussion of key issues by the leaders of an organization. This should be the high point of the day.

This is one of the most helpful leadership books I’ve read.  I look forward to re-reading it.

Leadership Axioms

This is probably Hybels’ best book. It has about 70 brief chapters on leadership axioms, invaluable for everyone in pastoral ministry.

This book is superb.  Bill Hybels is one of the top leaders in the church in America.  This book is a distillation of leadership wisdom, collected over three decades of doing ministry and leading people.

The book contains 76 leadership axioms – principles of leadership – in brief 1-3 page chapters. Some of the axioms are extremely valuable and nearly all of them are helpful.

If you are a leader in the cause of Christ, do yourself a favor and read this book.

Axiom

By Bill Hybels

This book is superb. Bill Hybels is one of the top leaders in the church in America. This book is a distillation of leadership wisdom, collected over three decades of doing ministry and leading people.

The book contains 76 leadership axioms – principles of leadership – in brief 1-3 page chapters. Some of the axioms are extremely valuable and nearly all of them are helpful.

If you are a leader in the cause of Christ, do yourself a favor and read this book.

Good to Great

This is my favorite leadership book. It is for so many people. Collins talks about companies that have made the transition from good companies to great companies. Fascinating section on level five leaders who combine personal humility and professional resolve, and on getting the right people in the right seats on the bus. But there’s so much more.

This book has had a remarkable impact on companies, churches and all kinds of organizations.  It is based on solid research from a team of researchers, and Collins is a superb communicator.

The result is a book that is both fascinating and helpful.

The research team studied companies that made the transition from good companies to great companies.  Here are their key findings:

• Level 5 Leaders.  Leaders who combine personal humility with professional resolve.
• First Who … Then What.  Get the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and then figure out where to drive the bus.
• Confront the Brutal Facts (Yet Never Lose Faith).  Be completely honest about facing the current reality and yet never lose hope that you will ultimately prevail.  This is the Stockdale paradox, named after Jim Stockdale who led the POWs in the Hanoi Hilton.The Hedgehog Concept.  Find out what you can be the best in the world at and then focus on that.
• A Culture of Discipline. You need disciplined people, disciplined thought and disciplined action.  You need a culture of discipline.
• Technology Accelerators.  Technology by itself does not ignite transformation but it can be used to accelerate transformation.
• The Flywheel Effect.  Transformation will not happen in one fell swoop.  Momentum is gradually built up until the flywheel is spinning rapidly.

This is by no means a dry book on leadership.  It is peppered with stories and anecdotes.  It is full of seasoned insight.  Overall, I count this book the most helpful book on leadership that I’ve read.