Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Patrick Lencioni

American Business Consultant, Author, Founder and President of The Table Group

"I find that there is a natural tendency among managing leaders to add unnecessary complexity to situations, problems, descriptions and solutions. As a result, plans do not come to fruition, employees get confused, customers become disappointed and leaders are left discouraged. So why do leaders do this? Why would they complicate their worlds and create problems for themselves and their organizations? First, I have to believe that they don?t know that they?re doing it. Based on my experience, executives generally don?t like to make their own lives more difficult. But since that is exactly what they?re doing, there must be a powerful underlying cause. I?m guessing it has to do with pride, and usually the intellectual kind."

"I wish organizational health were a standard."

"I am convinced that once organizational health is properly understood and placed into the right context it will surpass all other disciplines in business as the greatest opportunity for improvement and competitive advantage. Really."

"I hope the future will call on leaders to be more direct about people and problems within their organizations. Companies that cannot face their issues and deal with behavioral problems will probably pay a larger and larger price for it in an increasingly competitive world, and hopefully, this will place a greater premium on honesty and clarity. There is still so much opportunity for improved effectiveness in organizations if politics and dis-ingenuity (is that a word?) can be reduced."

"If you?re anonymous, minister upward to your boss."

"If you?re the leader of a team, go back and start by ensuring team members trust one another and are comfortable engaging in open conflict around issues. There is no substitute for trust?it begins with the willingness of team members to open themselves up to one another and admit their weaknesses and mistakes. In addition, any individual, whether an executive or a line employee, can impact a team in either a positive or negative way. Without holding one another accountable, even the best-intentioned team members can create dysfunctions within a team."

"If your team can?t mimic you when you?re not around, you?re not doing a good job communicating."

"Irrelevance is the feeling that an employee gets when they don?t see how their job really makes a difference in someone else?s life in some large or small way."

"Immeasurement is a word we coined because the principle we?re getting at is this, all human beings in any kind of a job need some way to assess their own performance that?s objective. It might not be numerical or easily quantitative, but it?s somewhat objective and observable by them. Because then they?re not left to depend upon the opinion or the whim of a manager once a year during a performance appraisal. People need to be able to home from work every night, or every week, or every month and know where they stand. And know what they can do to influence how they?re working. This is why sales people are generally very satisfied in their jobs, because they have very clear evidence of their performance. And most people think they?re coin-operated. But in fact, what a quota is to a salesperson is nothing more than a wonderful scoreboard for them evaluating themselves"

"In addition to being smart, organizations must be healthy. Minimal politics, minimal confusion, high morale, high productivity, low turnover."

"In today?s nano-second world, it?s hard to distinguish your company on the left (smart)."

"Irrelevance is a job killer. If you don?t think your job makes life better for others you can?t love your work."

"Leaders committed to building a team must have zero tolerance for individually focused behavior."

"Leaders have to play the tireless role of ensuring that (everyone) throughout the organization are continually and repeatedly reminded about what is important."

"Leaders who want healthy organizations cannot try to eliminate or reduce time spent in meetings by combining them or cutting them short."

"It?s as simple as this. When people don?t unload their opinions and feel like they?ve been listened to they won?t really get on board."

"It?s not about getting a good job or bad job. It?s about getting a fulfilling job or being miserable."

"Management is a ministry."

"Most companies would have described it simply as ?hard work,? and few people outside the organization knew exactly what it meant? In their case, the leaders described [it] as having no concerns about status and ego and willing to do whatever was necessary to help the company succeed. No job was beneath any employee, and even the highest-level executive had to be willing to do the most menial work if that?s what was needed. The value was so powerful that the day after the leadership team established it, one of its members decided to quit because he just didn?t see himself as being a floor sweeper. Without bitterness, he acknowledged that he had an ego and that a big part of his career was building a resum‚. He didn?t want to hold the team back by being a misfit."

"Most of us say our family is the most important thing in our life, yet we spend most of our time planning, strategizing, etc. at work and not at home. You need to put the same effort into your family that you give to your job."

"Money is a satisfier. They need enough to make them happy. Measure drivers."

"Members of trusting teams accept questions and input about their areas or responsibility, appreciate and tap into one another?s skills and experiences, and look forward to meetings and other opportunities to work as a group."

"Observations, observation, observation. I am not a scientific researcher, in the classic sense of the word. I just observe the behaviors and trends around me, and try to make sense of them in a way that others can grasp."

"Most of the companies I have encountered over the years seem addicted to having a long list of "top" priorities. As a result, they're unable to focus on any one of them out of fear that doing so will somewhat increases the likelihood that others will fall by the wayside. And so, the vast majority of these organizations end up peanut-buttering their energy and attention across so many different activities that none of them seem to be any more imperative than another. Hence the phrase, "if everything is important, then nothing is." Managers and employees alike are left scratching their heads as they try to decipher where to focus their limited time and resources, ultimately defaulting to whatever activity is most urgent or most tactically relevant to their isolated jobs. I've found that the best way to demonstrate the problem ? and illustrate a solution ? is to start close to home. In fact, at home itself."

"Most reasonable people don?t have to get their way in a discussion. They just need to be heard, and to know that their input was considered and responded to."

"Naked service providers and consultants confront clients (kindly) with difficult information and perspectives, even if the client might not like hearing it. Naked consultants ask potentially dumb questions, and make potentially dumb suggestions, because if those questions or suggestions ultimately help their client, it is worth the potential embarrassment. They also admit their weaknesses and celebrate their mistakes. Even before landing a client, a naked consultant will demonstrate vulnerability and take risks. They will give away their best ideas and start consulting to the prospective client during a sales call. In fact, they?ll do no real selling at all, foregoing that activity in order to find a way to help a client even if they never actually become one."

"Nobody wants to be anonymous."

"One of the greatest inhibitors of teamwork among executive teams is the fear of conflict, which stems from two separate concerns. On one hand, many executives go to great lengths to avoid conflict among their teams because they worry that they will lose control of the group and that someone will have their pride damaged in the process. Others do so because they see conflict as a waste of time.They prefer to cut meetings and discussions short by jumping to the decision that they believe will ultimately be adopted anyway, leaving more time for implementation and what they think of as "real work.""

"One of the primary causes of misery in a job, and that?s not to say having a bad job, because one person?s bad job might be another person?s dream job in terms of what the job is in itself, but misery is universal. And one of the most common causes of job misery is that feeling that employees have at all levels that they are not known by the person they work for. And that that person they work for isn?t interested in who they are as a person, professionally, personally, and has no interest in what?s going on in their life."

"Organizational health is the single greatest competitive advantage in any business."

"People need [to be] reminded more than instructed."

"Remember teamwork begins by building trust. And the only way to do that is to overcome our need for invulnerability."

"Organizational health must be smart. Strategy Marketing, Finance, Technology."

"Overcome the five dysfunctions: (1) Absence of trust. This isn?t about predictive trust, which is what happens when you get to know people and will know how they will react in a given situation. This is about vulnerability-based trust: the ability to say things like ?I don?t know,? ?I screwed up,? ?I need help,? or ?you?re good at this, please teach me.? If just one person on the team can?t be vulnerable, the absence of trust will spread like a disease and the team will not be successful. (2) Fear of conflict. Conflict is good for teams. Not mean, personal conflict but honest, issue-based conflict. You need to know that people on your team aren?t holding back their opinions. Our job on teams isn?t to be nice (to avoid disagreement) but to be kind and honest in how we disagree. (3) Lack of commitment. Conflict leads to commitment. To be more specific, when we cut off conflict, we cut off the ability for the team to truly commit. If people don?t weigh in on a decision (i.e., create conflict) then they won?t buy into the decision. When a difficult decision needs to be made, the leader?s job is to ensure that every person on the team ?stands on the chair? and gives his opinion. Then, the leader can explain why a decision was made and how all of the opinions factored into the decision. When everyone feels they have been heard, they are likely to support the decision even if they don?t agree with it. (4) Avoidance of accountability. Without true commitment, you can?t have accountability. Peer pressure is your best friend when it comes to accountability on a team. But leaders must be willing to hold people accountable or it simply won?t happen ? and they must hold people accountable for behaviors as well as for performance. (5) Inattention to results. Great teams have a pattern of winning and, to do that, they focus on the collective outcomes."

"Simply put, the three signs of a miserable job are irrelevance, anonymity, and immeasurability. If an employee can't identify the specific importance of their job to another human being, if they believe no one in their workplace knows them or cares about them as a person, or if they don't know - and can't apply themselves -- the standards by which success in their job is measured, they likely have a miserable job. [paraphrase]"

"Six Critical Questions - Why do we exist? How do we behave? What can we actually do? How do we succeed? What is most important in our organization right now? Who must do what?"

"Research shows people have to hear things seven times before they believe it."

"So, how do you begin the process of building a healthy organization? There are four key disciplines. (1) Build a cohesive leadership team. The leaders of any group, be it a company, department, school, church, etc., need to be behaviorally cohesive. (2) At the same time, you need to create clarity. The leaders have to be on the same page, they need to be completely aligned. (3) You need to over-communicate the clarity. Note that it?s not about over-communicating in general, you need to over-communicate the clarity. (4) You need to reinforce clarity. You must put just enough human systems in place to hire, reward, and manage effectively."

"Some people are hard to hold accountable because they are so helpful, others because they get defensive, others because they are intimidating. I don?t think it?s easy to hold anyone accountable, not even your own kids."

"Shouldn?t the real measure of an idea, system or approach to a problem be whether it actually works or not? For many executives who are enamored with sophistication, that isn?t enough. Often, they seem disappointed by simple but effective solutions to seemingly complex problems. I think one reason for that disappointment is that simple solutions usually require discipline and hard work over time, while the sophisticated ones seem like shiny silver bullets, capable of making a problem go away in one innovative shot. And it can be disconcerting, after years of studying and reading and learning, to come to the realization that success comes down to common sense and discipline. I certainly understand why many of us are so attracted to innovation and sophistication. After all, that is where most of our media and academic community focus their attention. Simple, workable solutions to problems don?t generally provoke magazine cover stories, journal articles in business schools, or features on the nightly news. But they do make for successful companies, informed employees and loyal customers. I guess that will have to be enough for now."

"Strategy should be accessible to everyone? The myriad of intentional decisions that allow you to succeed and differentiate yourself from your competitors."

"Teamwork begins by building trust. And the only way to do that is to overcome our need for invulnerability."

"The desire to put something in place to know you?re doing a good job."

"That being said, experiential team exercises can be valuable tools for enhancing teamwork as long as they are layered upon more fundamental and relevant processes. While each of these tools and exercises can have a significant short-term impact on a team?s ability to build trust,"

"The fact is, building a leadership team is hard. It demands substantial behavioral changes from people who are strong-willed and often set in their ways, having already accomplished great things in their careers. What follows is a realistic description of what a group of executives must be ready to do if they undertake the nontrivial task of becoming a team, something that is not necessarily right for every group of leaders."

"The Five Dysfunctions of a Team are a pyramidal structure, beginning with the first dysfunction and building from there. They are, from bottom to top: (1) Absence of trust among team members. This dysfunction is most evident in team members' inability to be vulnerable with one another, admitting faults, asking for help, etc. (2) Fear of conflict. The outward expression of this dysfunction is a false display of harmony within the team and the lack of healthy, constructive disagreement. (3) Lack of commitment. This can be seen when team members do not get buy-in from the rest of the team, nor do they commit to decisions made. (4) Avoidance of accountability. With this dysfunction, the team is hurt by the team's lack of calling each other out for irresponsibility or unhealthy behaviors/attitudes. (5) Inattention to results. This occurs when team members put their personal success or ego ahead of the team's goals and objectives. [paraphrased]"

"The Four Disciplines of a Healthy Organization: 1 ? Build a Cohesive Leadership Team. This is a must. Be vulnerable. Vulnerability based trust, not predictive trust?I need help. I don?t understand. I apologize?be butt naked with each other. If a leader is not vulnerable first, then nobody else will. Product and strategy may be problems but those are results of lack of trust in the executive team. You can?t be too vulnerable. The people we lead know what is going on ? be the first to acknowledge it and respond. Embrace vulnerability. It?s liberating. They?ll respond with loyalty and trust. 2 ? Create Clarity. Have core values and be willing to be punished/stand up for them. Agree on this stuff at the highest level. Be intolerant of the things that don?t support your core values. Go out and be who you are and over communicate the message. Leaders can?t be tired of repeating themselves. If your people can?t do an impression of you, you aren?t communicating it enough. Put some structure in places around processes that involve people. Simple structures. Institutionalize your culture without bureaucracy. Who are you? What are your values? Define that by 1 or 2 things. 3 ? Over Communicate Clarity. Communicate. Communicate. Communicate. 4 ? Reinforce Clarity. Institutionalize without commercializing your structure. Create enough structure to reinforce this. Not undefined structure. Great leaders are comfortable doing these things even if they are punished for it because that is how they make it real. Great leaders make it real eve if it hurts them. Great leaders are humble and willing to do the things that lead their organization. You will change your team, that will change their spouses, their kids, their families, their neighbors, their friends, and they will treat everyone else better. None of us can look back and say that is beneath us!"

"The first and most important step in building a cohesive and functional team is the establishment of trust. But not just any kind of trust. Teamwork must be built upon a solid foundation of vulnerability-based trust. This means that members of a cohesive, functional team must learn to comfortably and quickly acknowledge, without provocation, their mistakes, weaknesses, failures, and needs for help. They must also readily recognize the strengths of others, even when those strengths exceed their own."

"The first sign of a miserable job is anonymity. They didn?t know us or care about getting to know us."

"The high point of being a leader in an organization is wrestling with difficult decisions and situations. Truncating those high points just doesn?t make sense."