Review: THE ADVANTAGE, Patrick Lencioni

Week of: 

Reflection: “(tbd) Empathy: what?” 

Case study: “Aligning ambitions”

Book Author: Patrick Leoncini Published: 2012 (that’s a hefty twelve years)

At 12 years old this work makes a good first opportunity to play with this type of entry/article. Things get a little messy. But we’ll be okay.
In this article we’re going to summarize briefly what The Advantage by Patrick Lencioni attempts to do, my take on whether or not it did it, and then what elements of their proposal might be a good fit for (tbd) Empathy. 

The Advantage summary

As it says on the front, Leoncini’s over-arching position is that organizational health trumps all other concerns (business strategy, technology, and finance) in predicting the long-term success of a company. That was the selling point that brought me to it in the first place. Rather than proving this larger point is true (perhaps because it is so widely proclaimed to be believed), Leoncini spends most of his pages walking through how to make it happen. His pitch:

Four Disciplines:

One: Build a cohesive leadership team— Requiring: trust, conflict mastery, commitment, accountability, and a focus on results

Two: Create clarity (leadership team)— Process: Ask six questions- basically… project purpose, roles on project, success metrics, priorities, and division of responsibilities– and offers a deliverable called “The Playbook.” 

Three: Over Communicate clarity— Identifies different social flows for decision communication flows: cascading, top-down, and upward and lateral communication– and offers 

Four: Reinforce clarity— Basically this excerpt: “The way to [ensure that the answers to the six critical questions become embedded in the basics of the organization leaders must] make [sure] that every human system- every process that involves people– from hiring and people management to training and compensation, is designed to reinforce the answers to those questions.” 

My take:

Yes. For the most part, my prediction is this model would result in some positive growth for a leadership-driven organization. But I’ve been wondering about this so-called leadership construct in enterprise organizations… you mean to tell me two-thousand employees to six or so C-suites and we think the antidote to poor organizational health or unrest is teaching executives how to work together? That’s embarrassing. 

Overall, the hierarchical assumptions in this work leave a bad taste in my mouth. It is twelve-years old and there’s plenty in here to admire for that time (more on that below). This isn’t the only book that makes this assumption. We’ll need to call it something. First thought best thought: the petulant child misconception.

[WIP] Petulant child misconception: mommy and daddy (leadership) are fighting and the poor directionless reactive children (everybody else) are in such a tizzy. ← don’t worry we’ll iterate.

What can (tbd) Empathy learn here:

Empathy definitely plays a starring role in developing trust, navigating conflict, deciding to commit, and holding yourself and others accountable. Though I do not think The Advantage gave us an actionable recommendation for how to get there together. #organizational health

Good product development needs project purpose, roles definition, goals, prioritization, and task owners - so this gets a thumbs up too. The idea of fancying up a brief and calling the “The Playbook”? Sure! Why not. I think it’s cute how we assign purpose to sub-genre. 

I loved the delineation of communication types, and learned something I didn’t know about the top-down definition. Leoncini separates cascading and top-down by speaker. Although both messages go out to everyone eventually, cascading communication comes through the org and top-down comes directly from leaders. I don’t know if we’ll wind up getting into discourse mapping for organizational health here, but I am interested in thinking through how empathy may appear differently in these three paths.

Finally, returning to this (tweaked) quote “...make [sure] that every human system- every process that involves people– from hiring and people management to training and compensation, is designed to reinforce the answers to those questions.” When I read that I think scale. Basically, drown your organization in your philosophy. Inundate this population with your direction. On this one… I’m sorry to drop it in and not know yet how to react to it, but maybe I can just start with: how might we scale in different ways? Adaptive ways? Ooooo iterative ways? Organic ways?

We’ll see! 

Thanks, Holli