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A review by xteenb
The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business by Patrick Lencioni
5.0
Very easy reading, very easy concepts. But then love is an easy concept, but hard to get right. Creating a healthy workplace is hard work with simple, even common sense steps to take to get there. I'm sure many readers will react with a "duh" followed by "oh wait, I don't really do that. I totally neglected that."
While this is a book about leadership I couldn't help but read it as someone who left a job because of a lack of leadership. It helped me shape a new story for my experience at the U. I kept hitting my head into walls for two reasons. One was that my core value of enhancing the student experience came up against the institution's core value of faculty independence and government. When it came to student (or even university) interests against a single faculty's, the faculty would almost always win.
The second realization was that I had failed to over-communicate. When I began my work there, I spent a lot of time educating leadership and others. Leadership sometimes used my own words because they were so familiar to them. After I stopped lobbying, educating and informing, other voices became louder. And since leadership was not making tactical decisions based solely on reactive impulse, my voice simply never got mind share.
This book also reminded me of how wonderful it is to work on a healthy team. Our team's conflicts used to worry others but never us. We had seen the creative ideas and work that conflict stimulated. We did not worry about who had what role or what responsibility and knew that we could offer comments on a colleague's work. We expected them to do the same with us. We held each other accountable and celebrated reaching our shared goals. It's just too bad that our leadership never took the time to either endorse or condemn our goals. We would have felt more valued either way.
While this is a book about leadership I couldn't help but read it as someone who left a job because of a lack of leadership. It helped me shape a new story for my experience at the U. I kept hitting my head into walls for two reasons. One was that my core value of enhancing the student experience came up against the institution's core value of faculty independence and government. When it came to student (or even university) interests against a single faculty's, the faculty would almost always win.
The second realization was that I had failed to over-communicate. When I began my work there, I spent a lot of time educating leadership and others. Leadership sometimes used my own words because they were so familiar to them. After I stopped lobbying, educating and informing, other voices became louder. And since leadership was not making tactical decisions based solely on reactive impulse, my voice simply never got mind share.
This book also reminded me of how wonderful it is to work on a healthy team. Our team's conflicts used to worry others but never us. We had seen the creative ideas and work that conflict stimulated. We did not worry about who had what role or what responsibility and knew that we could offer comments on a colleague's work. We expected them to do the same with us. We held each other accountable and celebrated reaching our shared goals. It's just too bad that our leadership never took the time to either endorse or condemn our goals. We would have felt more valued either way.