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A review by aminowrimo
The 3 Big Questions for a Frantic Family: A Leadership Fable... about Restoring Sanity to the Most Important Organization in Your Life by Patrick Lencioni
3.0
The gist of this book is quite simple. All you need to do is answer these three big questions:
1. What makes our family unique?
.... (include core values and anchor points)
2. What is our most important priority in the next two to six months?
.... 2a. To do that we will...
.... 2b. We will also have to stay on top of our regular responsibilities...
3. How will we use our answers and keep them alive?
That's it.
By core values, the author means 2-3 values your family rates highly. For me, they are honesty and dependability. For my brother, it's fun, (and he refuses to list more than that). By anchor points, he's referring to the things that are true about your family, as in, 'Mom stays at home,' or 'we go to church every week.'
2a and 2b refer to the direct objectives and standard objectives, respectively. This is basically four to five things you need to do to realize the priority in the next two to six months, and four to five things that need to keep happening in order for you to be happy and healthy (like managing finances, or continuing to work out).
#3 simply means that you schedule a time to look over both standard and direct objectives, and examine the priority to make certain that you're on the right track and that it's still the priority for you. To rate your success level on the standard and direct objectives, Lencioni recommends you use three colors: Green for going swimmingly, Yellow for needs work, but acceptable, and Red for this needs immediate attention.
----
The book is organized in a different way than I've seen up to now... but perhaps this is the style of Lencioni's 'leadership fables.'
75% of the book is a story about the Cousins family, whose story starts with the very simple "If my clients ran their businesses the way we ran this family, they'd be out of business." (non-verbatim), and ends with "If my employers ran their business the way you run your family, they wouldn't be going out of business." (non-verbatim).
About 15% of the book after that is a quick sort of 'cheat-sheet' to make sure you got the ideas described in the story and know how to apply them. If you're in a hurry, only this last bit needs to be read. (Start from The Model).
----
All in all, this was a quick educational read. I'm certain it can be applied to single people also. Or practically everyone. If you're ready to think carefully, you probably don't even need to read the book, and can use practically every other productivity suggestion in the world to modify to your family's needs. After all, this book espouses the same things everyone else does: Have a goal and work towards it by limiting the amount of other stuff you do.
1. What makes our family unique?
.... (include core values and anchor points)
2. What is our most important priority in the next two to six months?
.... 2a. To do that we will...
.... 2b. We will also have to stay on top of our regular responsibilities...
3. How will we use our answers and keep them alive?
That's it.
By core values, the author means 2-3 values your family rates highly. For me, they are honesty and dependability. For my brother, it's fun, (and he refuses to list more than that). By anchor points, he's referring to the things that are true about your family, as in, 'Mom stays at home,' or 'we go to church every week.'
2a and 2b refer to the direct objectives and standard objectives, respectively. This is basically four to five things you need to do to realize the priority in the next two to six months, and four to five things that need to keep happening in order for you to be happy and healthy (like managing finances, or continuing to work out).
#3 simply means that you schedule a time to look over both standard and direct objectives, and examine the priority to make certain that you're on the right track and that it's still the priority for you. To rate your success level on the standard and direct objectives, Lencioni recommends you use three colors: Green for going swimmingly, Yellow for needs work, but acceptable, and Red for this needs immediate attention.
----
The book is organized in a different way than I've seen up to now... but perhaps this is the style of Lencioni's 'leadership fables.'
75% of the book is a story about the Cousins family, whose story starts with the very simple "If my clients ran their businesses the way we ran this family, they'd be out of business." (non-verbatim), and ends with "If my employers ran their business the way you run your family, they wouldn't be going out of business." (non-verbatim).
About 15% of the book after that is a quick sort of 'cheat-sheet' to make sure you got the ideas described in the story and know how to apply them. If you're in a hurry, only this last bit needs to be read. (Start from The Model).
----
All in all, this was a quick educational read. I'm certain it can be applied to single people also. Or practically everyone. If you're ready to think carefully, you probably don't even need to read the book, and can use practically every other productivity suggestion in the world to modify to your family's needs. After all, this book espouses the same things everyone else does: Have a goal and work towards it by limiting the amount of other stuff you do.