Many leaders spend large sums on marketing and technology trying to obtain a competitive advantage for their business. However, Patrick Lencioni explains that the biggest advantage they can gain is actually free and already within their reach: organizational health. Without organizational health, even the savviest industry leaders will find themselves failing to reach their full potential. In The Advantage, Lencioni lays out a straightforward plan to establish organizational health so that your company quickly becomes a powerhouse in its industry.
Lencioni is a consultant who specializes in executive team management and organizational health. He’s also the author of numerous books on business and team management, including The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Death by Meeting, and The Ideal Team Player. Lencioni began working in management and organizational health after realizing that struggling corporate leaders were wasting their time on things like strategy, finance, and marketing when their real problem was poor management. Since then, he’s dedicated himself to presenting a straightforward and actionable way for organizations to improve their management, cohesiveness, and efficiency—in other words, their organizational health.
This guide will define organizational health and lay out Lencioni’s method for achieving it. First, we’ll discuss how to create an effective leadership team. Next, we’ll cover how to form a unifying company culture with clear and consistent goals. Then, we’ll explain how to promote consistency and dedication among employees. Finally, we’ll explore how to maintain organizational health with effective meetings. Throughout the guide, we’ll supplement Lencioni’s advice with recommendations from other books that focus on organizational health and development, such as Traction by Gino Wickman and Start With Why by Simon Sinek.
The Organization of Lencioni’s The Advantage
In The Advantage, Lencioni explains that there are four disciplines that create a healthy organization:
A unified leadership team
Clear and consistent goals and standards
Regular communication with employees about goals and standards
Human systems that align with organizational goals and standards
Each of these four disciplines has its own chapter. Then, in two more chapters, Lencioni discusses the importance of meetings and leaders.
This organization is partially effective because healthy organizations must have a strong foundation—a leader who understands the importance of organizational health, a unified leadership team, and clear and consistent goals and standards that bring structure to the organization. Therefore, it makes sense to discuss these factors first.
However, “Step #3” of this guide combines Lencioni’s disciplines three and four. This is because they share the same purpose: to make sure employees are dedicated to and aligned with the organization’s goals. By condensing and combining these ideas, we’re able to spend more time discussing the importance of effective meetings (our “Step #4”), which Lencioni explains are crucial to maintaining organizational health. Effective meetings maintain the effects that the four disciplines create, and without them, organizational health will diminish. The points made in Lencioni’s final chapter discussing the importance of leaders are dispersed throughout the five sections of the guide.
Lencioni’s definition of organizational health encompasses two main factors. First, the organization’s goals and standards are clear, consistent, and regularly communicated to everyone in the organization. Second, individuals and groups align with the organization’s standards and are dedicated to the organization’s goals. Factor one is necessary for factor two to exist. When organizations implement these two factors of organizational health, Lencioni says they’ll be highly effective.
(Shortform note: Lencioni’s concept of organizational health (OH) isn’t new—the McKinsey group, a global management consulting firm, claims to have invented the concept roughly five years before The Advantage’s publication. Their definition of OH is very similar to Lencioni’s. However, they break organization health into three main standards: the ability to align around common goals and strategies, the ability to execute these goals and strategies at all levels of the organization, and the ability to adapt and innovate according to customer needs. Lencioni’s concepts of clear goals and standards and employee alignment are included in the McKinsey group’s first two standards, but McKinsey’s third standard takes Lencioni’s concept a step further.)
Lencioni explains that organizational health is important for two reasons. First, it enables organizations to meet their full potential. For strategies, financial investments, goals, and solutions to be effective, everyone must work towards the same overarching goals, uphold the same behavioral standards and values, and understand their role. Without these factors, even organizations with the best strategy, marketing, finances, and technology (what Lencioni calls intelligence) will fail to meet their full potential. Their progress will be hindered by politics and conflicting goals among leaders and departments. Further, work will lack meaning, and employee turnover will be higher.
(Shortform note: In Start With Why, Simon Sinek agrees that companies who focus on intelligence (what Sinek calls the company’s WHAT) while ignoring things like clear goals, standards, and values (what Sinek calls the company’s WHY) are destined to fail—confusion and disorganization will arise and employees will lose motivation and dedication. Sinek calls this phenomenon “the split.” He explains that companies are at the highest risk of the split when leaders become disconnected from the organization’s WHY. This disconnect usually occurs because the leader loses sight of the organization’s purpose after finding success, or because they’re replaced with someone who doesn’t share the same dedication to the organization’s WHY.)
Second, organizational health will be your invisible superpower because many leaders overlook it—they think it’s too intangible to focus on and achieve, are too impatient to complete the process of developing health, or don’t believe in its impact. If you’re dedicated, persistent, and disciplined enough to see it through, organizational health will give you the competitive advantage that others are too blind to see.
(Shortform note: Research supports Lencioni’s claim that organizational health will give your company a tangible advantage that’s overlooked by competitors. The McKinsey group found that over the course of a decade, companies that improved their organizational health reported an 18% increase in earnings and a 10% increase in returns to shareholders (TRS). For context, the average company on the S&P 500 (an index that tracks the stock performance of 500 large companies listed on exchanges in the United States) showed only a 7% average increase in earnings and a 9% average increase in TRS.)
Lencioni’s process to achieve organizational health can be broken into four main steps:
We’ll explore each step in detail throughout the rest of the guide.
Lencioni explains that organizational health starts at the top, so you must begin by creating a unified and efficient leadership team. This team should ideally be composed of three to nine individuals who’ll share responsibility for establishing and achieving organizational goals. Each of these individuals should represent a crucial part of the organization or provide a unique, valuable perspective to the team. The team should be able to come to collective decisions after meaningful discussions and debates.
(Shortform note: The importance of effective leadership teams and the characteristics they must have—like safety, accountability, and specialized roles—are widely accepted among business experts. However, the ideal size of an effective team has been widely debated and studied for years before and after the publication of The Advantage. In recent years, experts have generally come to the agreement that smaller is better—small teams make more effective decisions at a more efficient pace. While the ideal number of members will depend on factors like the size of your organization, the general consensus is that the maximum number of members should be seven—two less than Lencioni’s suggestion of nine.)
To create a unified and effective leadership team, Lencioni explains that the team must establish five standards: safety, advocacy and debate, unanimous dedication, specialized roles, and the ability to hold each other responsible. Let’s explore each standard in detail.
Lencioni explains that building a safe environment in which members trust and understand each other is the foundation of a unified and effective team. Safety allows members to admit shortcomings, hold others accountable, have disagreements, ask for help, and share praise.
(Shortform note: While Lencioni mentions accountability as one benefit of a safe environment, the authors of Crucial Accountability emphasize accountability as the most important of the benefits Lencioni discusses. They elaborate that effective accountability conversations are the true cornerstone of a productive work environment because they facilitate the resolution of organizational problems and conflicts. To create a safe environment that promotes accountability, the authors explain that you must establish mutual respect and a shared purpose.)
To build safety among team members, Lencioni recommends holding an off-site meeting where members:
1) Share personal stories explaining the major parts of their life thus far—where they were born, what their family dynamic was, their personal interests, and the hardships and accomplishments they’ve faced in their life. This will give members a better understanding of each other’s behavioral tendencies and values. For example, you might realize that one member is sensitive to conflict because they grew up in a dysfunctional household.
(Shortform note: Getting to know team members by learning their backgrounds is arguably necessary because it contributes to what Charles Duhigg calls “social sensitivity,” a necessary ingredient for safety. In Smarter Faster Better, Duhigg explains that social sensitivity is the ability to read others’ emotions through their tone or body language. This allows team members to understand when others are upset, predict what might elicit an emotional reaction from them, and sense when they may need extra attention to feel valued and respected. Getting to know your team members will make it easier to read their tone and emotions, thus increasing your social sensitivity.)
2) Take a personality test, like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, and share their results with the team. This will give members insight into their peers' likes, dislikes, communication styles, and so on, and will improve collaboration.
(Shortform note: While Lencioni recommends using a personality test like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) to get to know your colleagues, this test lacks scientific standing and is widely criticized for various reasons. First, the MBTI was developed based on Carl Jung’s non-scientific personal insights—and recent research suggests that these insights were incorrect. Further, many people report receiving different results each time they take the test despite their lives remaining fairly consistent, which brings into question the test’s accuracy.)
3) Learn about the fundamental attribution error—a human trait that makes us more likely to unfairly judge others. The fundamental attribution error states that people tend to blame others’ negative behaviors on personal factors like their desires or traits, whereas we blame our own bad behavior on external factors (thereby absolving ourselves of responsibility). For example, you’re likely to blame a colleague's outburst on their bad attitude but blame your own outburst on a stressful situation. However, if members understand each other (the purpose of the previous two activities in this list), they’ll be less likely to engage in the fundamental attribution error and level personalized blame, thereby creating a safer environment.
(Shortform note: In Crucial Accountability, the authors explain that making the fundamental attribution error during accountability conversations can spell disaster for professional relationships, and as Lencioni explains, diminish safety. However, rather than simply building mutual understanding between members and hoping it prevents the error as Lencioni suggests, the authors of Crucial Accountability recommend a specific strategy for avoiding it: Before forming opinions about someone’s actions or intentions, consider all of the personal, social, or environmental factors that might have influenced their behavior.)
Next, Lencioni explains that the leadership team must encourage advocacy and debate to make effective decisions. Each member of the leadership team should feel comfortable advocating for their ideas. Without discussing the merits and pitfalls of each suggestion and engaging in disagreements, it’ll be impossible to determine the best idea.
When Advocacy and Debate Turn Into Interrupting and Monopolization
Lencioni argues that for decisions to be effective, each member of the team should feel comfortable advocating for their ideas and disagreeing with others. However, engaging in advocacy and debate can cause problems if members take things too far by interrupting others and monopolizing the conversation to promote their ideas and discredit those of others.
So, how do you maintain healthy levels of advocacy and debate while ensuring that people don’t monopolize? Experts say there are a few options. First, you can introduce a structure in which first, each person is given individual time to speak; then, there’s a separate period in which debate is encouraged. If interrupters or monopolizers still prevail during the debate period, you can discuss these issues generally with the entire team. That way, no one is singled out but the perpetrator understands that their behavior’s not appropriate.
If the problem still persists after this general conversation, you can then have a private conversation with the perpetrator—but remember that they might not be aware of their behavior. Explain to them specifically what they’re doing, how long they’ve been doing it, and how it affects the group.
Lencioni notes that establishing a safe environment that also encourages conflict is difficult because people want to avoid hurting each other’s feelings. To establish this environment, the leader of the organization needs to set an example—encourage everyone to speak up and show the group that disagreements can be addressed productively and respectfully. Leaders must scan the room for points of conflict during meetings, bring them to the group's attention, and open a respectful discussion.
For example, imagine the team is discussing where to allocate excess funds this quarter, and one member suggests putting it towards charity. While some members agree, others remain silent and look hesitant. The leader should notice and address this conflict by encouraging advocacy and debate—asking members to explain why they disagree and to propose alternative suggestions.
(Shortform note: While Lencioni advises leaders to create a safe environment for debate by surfacing points of conflict and setting a good example, this might not be enough to establish safety and avoid hurt feelings. The authors of Crucial Conversations suggest performing an additional step to ensure that everyone feels comfortable. Remind members that they share a mutual purpose for engaging in debate: to facilitate understanding among one another and come to the best decision for the company. That way, people will see debate as a constructive activity, will be less likely to take disagreements personally, and will be more likely to effectively engage in the conversation.)
Further, Lencioni says that every member must be fully dedicated to team decisions and organizational priorities for the leadership team to be effective. If even one member of the team lacks dedication or denies responsibility, they could end up sabotaging productivity and dividing the team with politics (conflict regarding responsibilities and power).
To foster dedication, the leader must ensure that everyone agrees on, or at least understands, the merits of a decision before it’s made—there should be no “majority rules” decisions. Members may debate each other but should unanimously agree on the best course of action before a meeting concludes. This is only possible in teams that have mutual trust and encourage and tolerate conflict.
(Shortform note: Lencioni recommends ensuring that decisions are unanimous, or at least unanimously understood. Experts agree but warn against homogenous decision-making. They elaborate that if everyone in the group immediately agrees on the “best” course of action without thinking things through, that decision might be biased or short-sighted and produce undesirable outcomes. To avoid homogeneous decision-making, they recommend specifically appointing a few “devil’s advocates” for each discussion who bring up alternative points of view or potential issues with the favored ideas. This will ensure that unanimous decisions aren’t biased or flawed.)
Additionally, members must prioritize and share responsibility for the organization’s goals. Many leadership teams are made up of members who run different departments, such as sales, transportation, marketing, and so on. Each of these members will have individual and departmental goals; however, the current goals of the organization as a whole must be their top priority. For example, if the company’s quarterly goal is to increase sales by 5%, every member of the leadership team should help achieve this goal, not just the person in charge of sales.
(Shortform note: Experts agree that team members must share collective responsibility for decisions and goals, adding that one way to achieve this is to have members sign a joint responsibility statement. Signing this statement at the start of a meeting will ensure that members are more willing to share ideas and work to find the best one because they’ve already agreed to take responsibility for the outcome. It’ll also create a more equal distribution of power, which will help encourage discourse and produce a wide range of ideas.)
Lencioni explains that effective leadership teams must designate each member a specific role based on their expertise. The team should then divide important tasks between members based on their roles. This will increase efficiency by ensuring that all necessary tasks are accomplished and no two people end up working on the same thing.
Further, without a division of labor, politics and disorganization are likely to arise. For example, one member may spread themselves too thin by getting overly involved in another member’s department. This could cause frustration for the other members (politics) and slow down progress in both departments (disorganization).
(Shortform note: Experts agree that clearly defining team roles and responsibilities is key for productive and effective organizations. However, they add a few extra recommendations to help create effective roles that people enjoy working in. First, ask members about their long-term goals and try to assign them roles and responsibilities that will help them to accomplish those goals. Next, give members complete ownership over their roles—showing members that you trust them to get their tasks done without looking over their shoulder will provide them with motivation and encourage them to take initiative.)
Finally, Lencioni explains that team members must be comfortable directly holding each other responsible for their work rather than asking the leader to enforce accountability. This means confronting someone if they stray from their commitments or are hindering progress, even if they’re doing it unintentionally. This will maintain unity and encourage dedication among team members because they know they’ll be held accountable for their efforts.
To get into the practice of holding each other accountable, Lencioni recommends that team members write down one beneficial thing that each member does and share their responses. Then, have everyone write one thing each person does that might hurt the team and have everyone share their responses. By discussing the positives before the negatives, team members will feel more comfortable being transparent with each other for the benefit of the team.
How to Have an Effective Accountability Conversation
While Lencioni’s strategy helps team members to practice holding each other accountable, it doesn’t explain how to effectively conduct an accountability conversation in the moment when difficult situations arise. The authors of Crucial Accountability explain that this skill is crucial because accountability conversations are complex and delicate—even one small error when discussing accountability with an employee could compromise safety and create more issues than you started with. As such, they add to Lencioni’s advice by providing a step-by-step method for how to have accountability conversations.
1) Identify the key issue at hand and whether or not it’s worth addressing. To identify the key issue, consider the root cause of the person’s bad behavior—what person, social, or environmental factors led to their actions? For example, maybe they missed a deadline because they have a procrastination issue. Then, consider whether or not this key issue will persist, get worse, or harm your relationship if left unaddressed. If yes, then you should hold an accountability conversation.
2) Make the environment safe by understanding their point of view. Consider the underlying barriers that might have prevented the other person from upholding their commitments. This will help you avoid the fundamental attribution error discussed earlier in this guide.
3) Introduce the issue in a clear and concise way to show respect and a shared purpose. Do this by clearly stating the facts—what your expectations were and how the other person broke them. Then, explain how this impacted you. Finally, open the floor for them to respond and explain their perspective.
4) Make a plan and follow up. Once you and the other person understand the issue and the expectation, work together to come up with a solution to the problem. Then, follow up with the other person to make sure that your plan is working.
Next, Lencioni says that leadership teams must create a company culture with clear and consistent organizational goals and standards. These goals and standards will provide employees with clarity on the organization’s purpose and their role in it and will unify them through shared values and ideals.
To create a company culture with clear and consistent goals and standards, Lencioni says the leadership team must establish four principles: the organization's core purpose, its behavioral values, its strategies for success, and its top priority.
(Shortform note: In The Culture Code, Daniel Coyle similarly emphasizes the importance of a strong company culture with clear and consistent goals and standards. However, rather than the organization’s purpose being one component of a strong organizational culture, he says purpose is the foundation of other cultural elements, like behavioral values, success strategies, and priorities. He elaborates that putting purpose at the core of the organization will increase the energy employees put towards tasks, make people learn faster, and increase connection and empathy among coworkers and customers. Ultimately, these benefits will maximize the organization's success.)
Lencioni says that all organizations function to help people in some way. To determine your organization’s core purpose, reflect on what your organization does and why. Your what should be pretty straightforward, but your why will probably be somewhat unique—who are you trying to benefit and how? The possibilities are endless, but your answer must be specific, true, and concise.
For example, if you run a dry cleaning business, your what would be “we wash and dry people’s laundry.” Your why could be “we wash and dry people’s laundry so that clean, professional-looking clothes are accessible to all.”
(Shortform note: In Find Your Why, Simon Sinek agrees with Lencioni that your purpose statement must be specific, true, and concise. However, he emphasizes one more characteristic that Lencioni doesn’t mention: Your purpose statement must be constant. This means that your purpose should be upheld in all aspects of your work and should endure over time. For example, if your core purpose is to help people save money on essentials, you can uphold this purpose by providing employees with free hygiene essentials like toothbrushes and deodorant.)
Lencioni explains that healthy organizations must identify their behavioral values so employees align with and uphold the company’s cultural expectations. These values should encompass (1) positive behaviors that are already represented in your organization and (2) behaviors that you aspire to incorporate into your organizational culture. When compiling your list, Lencioni recommends writing these values as they would look in action rather than as one-word adjectives—this makes them more specific and actionable for employees.
For example, avoid one-word values like charity, altruism, and drive. Instead, say “a passion for helping those who are less fortunate,” “willingness to sacrifice personal wants for others’ needs,” and “tenacity to accomplish personal and professional goals.”
How to Identify Existing Behavioral Values in Your Organization
Lencioni recommends creating behavioral values based on ones that already exist in your organization and ones that you want to implement. However, it’s often easier to identify what you want than to recognize what you already have. In Traction, Gino Wickman provides a four-step method for uncovering your organization’s existing behavioral values:
Think of three people in your company who stand out as star performers.
List all the characteristics and values these people embody—for example, hard-working, customer-focused, or imaginative. (This might be a long list, but include everything.)
Combine similar values from the list of characteristics you created in the previous step.
Finally, narrow your list down to three to seven values that you think best define your organization.
Lencioni explains that healthy organizations should have three primary strategies that they use to achieve their core purpose. To identify these strategies, brainstorm a long list of all the possible ways that you can achieve your purpose. Then, divide similarly themed ideas from your long list into groups and label each theme—for example, ideas that are related to keeping consumer costs low can be lumped into an “affordability”-themed group. Finally, narrow down the three themes you think are most important to upholding your core purpose—these will be your primary success strategies.
Lencioni says that this method will ensure that your company’s actions align with and progress your core purpose. This will result in organizational clarity and consistency, two factors that are vital for healthy organizations.
For example, imagine your dry cleaning business’s core purpose is to “wash and dry people’s laundry so that clean, professional-looking clothes are accessible to all.” Some strategies on your long list might be: Keep prices low, use hypoallergenic detergent, be located within walking distance of public transportation, and remain open 24 hours a day. These strategies can be lumped into the overarching theme of “inclusivity,” which is an important strategy for upholding your core purpose.
Creating Good Company Strategy
Lencioni recommends creating success strategies based on your organization's core purpose. However, in Good Strategy Bad Strategy, Richard Rumelt suggests that focusing on your goals while strategizing can produce weak strategies because doing so fails to identify organizational challenges and ways to overcome them. This can cause problems down the line. Imagine your organization as a metal chain—if you allow weak links to remain, they’ll eventually give out. Similarly, allowing internal issues to persist will cause major issues for your company’s health down the road.
To create a solid company strategy that both aligns with your organization’s core purpose and helps your organization overcome challenges, Rumelt suggests identifying internal weaknesses and leveraging your organization’s strengths to help overcome them: in other words, using your strengths to improve your areas of weakness.
For example, imagine that your organization is full of strong innovators who love to brainstorm new ideas, but one of its internal weaknesses is a lack of collaboration between teams. If teams continue to shun collaboration, organizational health will eventually decline. To avoid this outcome, use your company’s strength of innovation to encourage members to collaborate: Create a strategy called “collaborative innovation.” This might include policies such as requiring weekly meetings to share innovative new ideas, creating new teams that work together on innovative product designs, and using peer review to evaluate innovations.
Finally, Lencioni explains that healthy organizations should have a single, short-term goal that’s their top priority. This will ensure that the organization solves issues that could harm it and continues to improve. Your short-term goal should be achievable within three to 12 months and should be a shared effort among the leadership team.
To determine your short-term goal, consider one thing that must be done in the next year or less to improve or maintain your organization. Then, create a to-do list—determine exactly what must happen to solve the problem or achieve the goal. Finally, determine the areas of improvement your organization must focus on to accomplish each item on your to-do list.
(Shortform note: In Traction, Gino Wickman also emphasizes the importance of short-term goals, but his recommendations slightly differ from Lencioni’s. While Lencioni recommends creating goals that can be accomplished in three to 12 months, Wickman says that you should give yourself a full 12 months to complete your plan. The plan must include a revenue goal, a profit goal, and measurables (like a number of clients to gain or a number of products to produce). You must also identify seven priorities you’ll complete within the year to propel you toward the goal—a more specific version of Lencioni’s to-do list. Finally, Wickman recommends creating a budget to ensure you have the necessary resources to complete the plan—something Lencioni doesn’t address.)
For an organization to be healthy, Lencioni says that employees must align with and be dedicated to the organization’s goals and standards—this is vital for organizational unity.
To achieve employee alignment, the organization’s hiring and firing processes must align with its goals and standards. To achieve employee dedication, leaders must constantly and effectively communicate the organization’s goals and standards and their personal dedication to them. Let’s explore each of these processes in more detail.
(Shortform note: To create employee alignment and dedication, Lencioni says goals and standards must be prioritized during hiring and firing and must be constantly communicated to employees. While John Doerr agrees that goals must be transparent, he points out in Measure What Matters that creating organizational goals and standards at the top, as Lencioni recommends, may disrupt employee dedication. When goals and standards are created at the top and then trickled down through methods like hiring processes and rigid protocols, employees on the ground aren’t given the opportunity to offer ideas regarding their own work. Consequently, they may feel like their opinions and experiences aren’t valued, and organizational efficiency, flexibility, connection, and motivation may decrease as a result.)
The first step in achieving employee alignment is to prioritize the organization's goals and standards during the hiring process. Many organizations struggle with this because they prioritize potential employees’ skills over their attitudes and values. Hiring employees who don’t align with the company’s goals and standards disrupts organizational health by causing inconsistencies within organizational culture, disagreements, low productivity, and high employee attrition.
Before placing value on a candidate's skills, interviewers should gauge whether the candidate upholds the organization’s behavioral values and believes in the organization’s core purpose. Candidates who don’t align shouldn’t be considered for the role. Employees who are hired should be thoroughly trained on the organization’s core purpose, behavioral values, and success strategies to reinforce alignment and dedication.
Next, Lencioni says that organizations must change their firing practices to retain employees that meet behavioral standards and eliminate employees who don’t—regardless of their skill level. If you’re considering firing an employee who meets behavioral standards but lacks skill, give them a performance improvement plan instead—according to Lencioni, it’s easier to improve the skills of someone who’s aligned with the organization than to change the attitude and values of someone who’s highly skilled.
How to Measure Employee Alignment for Hiring and Firing Practices
Lencioni says that an employee's alignment with organizational goals and values must be prioritized during the hiring and firing processes to create a healthy organization. Organizational health experts generally concur with this sentiment, but some emphasize that it can be difficult to accurately judge whether or not someone truly aligns with your organization’s goals and values. Sometimes, a misunderstanding in this area may cause you to overlook a prime candidate or fire a highly aligned and dedicated employee. To avoid these pitfalls, experts make a few recommendations that will guide you on who to fire and who to retain.
First, when creating alignment guidelines, identify three to five behavioral values (or in Lencioni’s model, standards that an employee should believe in) that your company prioritizes. These will be the values that measure someone’s alignment with the company during the hiring and firing processes. Lencioni makes a similar recommendation, but he doesn’t specify the number of values that should be prioritized.
Second, create a list of open-ended questions that will prompt the candidate to identify the company’s values on their own, before the interviewer tells them what they are. For example, you can explain a star employee’s behavior, interactions, accomplishments, and other aspects that highlight how they uphold the company’s values. Then, ask the candidate to explain why these actions led to success and which behavioral values (or standards) they represent. This will help you identify how familiar the candidate is with your company’s values coming into the interview and will give you insight into their communication skills.
This method can also be used to determine whether or not to fire a candidate—before firing someone, have a meeting and use these questions to ensure you avoid losing a valuable employee who meets your behavioral standards due to a misunderstanding surrounding their alignment.
To ensure employee dedication to the organization’s goals and standards, these goals and standards—and leaders’ dedication to them—must be effectively and repeatedly communicated. Lencioni explains information must be repeated multiple times for employees to fully understand it and dedicate themselves to acting on it. Further, information must be communicated in a way that achieves employee buy-in.
(Shortform note: Experts similarly emphasize that constant and effective communication is necessary for an organization to continue growing. They list three components that make communication within an organization effective: It must inspire, educate, and reinforce. These components align with Lencioni’s recommendation to repeatedly communicate in a way that achieves employee buy-in. Reinforcing previously established goals and standards means constantly communicating them, and making information inspiring and educational ensures that employees always personally believe in goals and standards and know what’s expected from them.)
Outside of traditional communication methods like newsletters, email announcements, and all-hands meetings, cascading communication is the best way to ensure employee dedication. Cascading communication is when news travels from the top down by word of mouth. In practice, this means that members of the leadership team leave meetings and immediately share the news from that meeting with their direct reports, who then share with their direct reports, and so on until the entire organization has received the news.
For cascading communication to be effective, Lencioni says that messages must be consistent and communicated promptly and face-to-face. Members of each hierarchy bracket (executives, managers, supervisors, general employees, and so on) must receive the same message within the same time frame. For example, all executives should get the news within the first hour, managers within the second hour, supervisors within the third hour, and so on.
How to Create a Strategic Cascading Communication Plan
Cascading communication is an extremely popular method recommended by business consultants to help organizations effectively communicate with employees. However, like Lencioni, many experts emphasize that cascading communication can quickly become disorganized and ineffective if messages aren’t consistent and communicated promptly. To ensure these standards are met, experts recommend creating a strategic communication plan with the following steps:
1) Identify the key components of the message. Cascading communication takes place face-to-face and as such, messages are often expressed to direct reports in a personalized way. However, leaders can sometimes miss important pieces of information when tailoring the message. To avoid this, the leadership team must outline the key components of the message that they and their direct reports must communicate downwards.
2) Ensure the message is concise and effective. Direct reports must ensure that their messages (1) emphasize the key components, (2) explain how and why the information will be applied, and (3) avoid unnecessary tangents.
3) Make sure that everyone is accounted for. Make sure that every member of the organization receives the message, especially if they don’t report to a leader in the main hierarchy. For example, you could make a map of the organization and appoint a leader to share information with each group, including groups that don’t have direct executive supervisors.
4) Plan for a follow-up. Just because information is communicated doesn't mean it’s followed through on. Schedule a time to follow up with each level of the hierarchy to ensure the message was understood and acted upon. This is the time when you should receive feedback from employees as well to make sure the plan was effective and to address any questions or concerns people might have.
Cascading communication is effective because face-to-face communication increases personal dedication. When employees witness their leader’s dedication through their facial expressions and tone and are able to respond and ask questions, they feel personally involved in the organization’s mission and consequently more dedicated.
(Shortform note: Experts agree with Lencioni that face-to-face communication (FTFC) increases employee dedication and productivity. They also note a few benefits that Lencioni doesn’t mention. First, FTFC increases trust by helping employees get to know each other. Second, real-time conversations make it easier to explain your point and persuade employees that it’s valid. Third, FTFC enhances conflict resolution because people are more likely to pick up on tension based on the other person’s body language and resolve any issues immediately. Written communication makes it far more difficult to read others’ emotions, which is a necessary component of conflict resolution.)
Finally, Lencioni explains that you must maintain organizational health by having effective meetings. In these meetings, the organization’s values and success strategies must be used to solve problems, achieve goals, and progress the organization. To be effective, the meetings must have a clear, narrow focus.
Implement Effective Meetings at All Levels of the Organization
While Lencioni emphasizes that the leadership team must have effective meetings to establish organizational health, Ray Dalio points out in Principles: Life and Work that effective meetings need to occur at every level of the organization to maintain productivity. As such, he recommends that all leaders and teams use the following criteria for meetings to keep them effective:
Clarify the details—who’s running the meeting, what level the meeting is taking place at, and what its (clear and narrow) goal is. For example, it could be an informational meeting or a debate.
Determine how many people should be invited and who they should be. Dalio points out, like Lencioni, that decision-making meetings should be limited in numbers—roughly three to five people. However, educational meetings can include more people.
Track the conversation. Keep track of the conversation on a public board like a shared screen or a whiteboard to ensure that the meeting stays on-topic. This will also help members of the team stay on track because they can see where the conversation is going.
Lencioni proposes five types of meetings that your leadership team should have regularly.
Every morning for five to 10 minutes, the team should meet to share any relevant administrative information like scheduling issues or important events. This will solve small problems quickly and ensure that everyone’s in the loop while saving time that’s usually spent emailing back and forth or playing phone tag.
(Shortform note: Lencioni’s concept of daily meetings is commonly used in the software development world. Such meetings are referred to as “stand-up” meetings. Experts add a few tips to Lencioni’s advice on how to keep these quick, daily check-in meetings effective: (1) Schedule a daily time for the meeting and stick to it. (2) Have a clear leader. (3) Make sure the meeting doesn’t exceed 15 minutes (in contrast to Lencioni’s 10-minute mark). (4) Note important side conversations that arise so you can discuss them later.)
Once a week, the team should meet for 45 to 90 minutes to discuss their progress toward their short-term goal. At the start of the meeting, collaboratively create an agenda: Begin by having each member briefly share their priorities for the week (issues to fix or activities to perform) that relate to the short-term goal. Then, the team must determine their progress level—good, average, or bad—toward each item on their to-do and areas of improvement lists (see Step #2, Principle #4). The areas with the lowest progress should indicate which of the topics listed by members should be added to the agenda and which can be left out. For example, if you’re making the slowest progress on “increasing sales,” make sure this is added to the agenda first.
How to Create an Effective Weekly Meeting Agenda
While Lencioni emphasizes that weekly meeting agendas should only be created at the start of the meetings with all members involved, many experts argue that agendas should be created and distributed to members in advance. In Traction, Gino Wickman explains that pre-established agendas provide consistent structure to meetings that increase productivity.
Furthermore, while Lencioni advises creating agendas at the start of meetings to allow for real-time collaboration when choosing discussion topics, Wickman’s pre-established meeting agenda still allows time for this.
Wickman explains that weekly meeting agendas should use the following format:
Spend the first five minutes having members share good news.
Identify how much progress you're making toward each of your goals. This corresponds to Lencioni’s advice to discuss progress toward items on your areas of improvement and to-do lists.
Mark goals that are off track for later discussion.
Discuss customer reviews, positive and negative, and mark negatives for later discussion.
Discuss short-term to-dos that were identified at the previous weekly meeting to make sure they were followed through on and were effective. This will enforce accountability and productivity.
Address the issues that you marked for “later discussion” in the previous steps. The solutions you’ve identified to these problems should be put on a to-do list to be discussed at the next meeting in Step 5.
Conclude the meeting by reviewing what needs to get done and who needs to do it, identifying what needs to be communicated to employees, and having each member rate the productivity of the meeting from one to 10.
At least once a month, the team should gather for two to four hours to discuss critical, complex issues the organization is facing—for example, major changes in revenue, finances, the industry, or competition. During the meeting, the leader must first explain each issue and its major components. Then, the team should brainstorm all possible solutions, debate the pros and cons of each solution, and come to a concrete decision that every member commits to before the meeting ends.
(Shortform note: In Traction, Gino Wickman presents an alternative method for solving issues during strategic meetings. His method, called the ‘Issues Solving Track,’ has three major steps: identify, discuss, and solve. First, you must identify the issue by determining its type—either a problem to be solved, information to be shared and agreed upon, or an idea that needs feedback—and its source. Second, discuss the issue by encouraging people to share their ideas, as Lencioni suggests, and halting tangents when they arise. Third, solve the issue by keeping in mind the following tips: When members disagree, the majority is usually wrong; hear from all first-hand parties before acting; act in the company’s best interest; and face the most daunting issues first.)
Once every quarter, the team should meet for one to three days off-site to discuss the fundamentals of their organization’s health and standing—specifically, to evaluate their success strategies, short-term goal, employee performance, and cohesion (including that of the leadership team). They should also discuss changes in the industry, like new competition. This is the time when new short-term goals should be developed, success strategies should be altered if necessary, and plans to improve the organization’s overall health should be made.
Creating a Quarterly Meeting Agenda
While Lencioni suggests the general topics to discuss during quarterly meetings, he doesn’t lay out a specific agenda for discussing these topics. In Traction, Gino Wickman recommends using the following agenda to ensure that quarterly meetings are productive and progress the company’s goals:
Open the meeting. Each member should reflect on the last 90 days and share good and bad news, what’s working and not working, and their expectations for the meeting.
Review the previous quarter. Review financials, as well as the priorities of each leadership team and the company as a whole. Then, record which priorities were and weren’t achieved. Priorities that weren’t achieved should either be reassigned to the next quarter or put on a two-week to-do list if they’re close to completion.
Review the company’s vision. In this step, Wickman recommends that members review what Lencioni refers to as the company’s core purpose and short-term goal. Afterward, compile a list of any barriers that prevent you from achieving your goal—for example, financial issues, competition, poor marketing, and so on.
Determine this quarter’s priorities. This step mirrors Lencioni’s advice to set a new short-term goal or adjust your areas of improvement and to-do list. Wickman recommends narrowing your to-do list down to three to seven items that should be accomplished over the next quarter.
Make a plan. Determine who needs to do what and whether there’s any new information that should be communicated to employees.
Review the meeting. Each member should share how productive they think the meeting was from one to 10, whether their expectations from Step 1 were met, and any other feedback on the meeting they have.
Lencioni says that to maintain organizational health, you need three primary strategies that your company can use to achieve its core purpose. These strategies will provide your company with guidance when creating short-term goals, areas of improvement, and to-do lists.
Clearly state your organization’s core purpose and brainstorm all the possible ways you can achieve that purpose. (For example, imagine that your purpose is to influence more people to care for the environment. You might be able to achieve this by handing out brochures in public places like universities or train stations, getting popular people like celebrities or influencers to advocate for your cause, petitioning government organizations to change or enforce policies, holding rallies, selling products at popular grocery stores, and so on.)
Next, paste your strategy list from the previous step below, re-organize your list into several groups based on their common themes, and give each theme a descriptive name. (For example, your themes might be “make eco-friendly products more available to the public,” “increase public awareness of environmental issues,” “change government policies around environmental issues,” and so on.) These will be your success strategy options.
Finally, state the top three success strategies that you think will be most helpful in achieving your core purpose and describe why they’ll be the most effective. These will be the core success strategies that will guide your short-term goals.