Patrick Lencioni: The five dysfunctions of a Team

This is an excellent tale to model how efficient teams can remove the most valid obstacles from their functioning.

This book is one of the most valued literature for managers and leaders in my coaching practive. Why? Because this little book presents a convincing model embedded in a brief "fable" from a business guru's point of view.
The story begins from a challenging situation of an unefficient team, which is converged into a highly efficient team, just because of a strong leadership, focusing on trust-, constructive conflict,  commitment- accountability- and result building.
The main character, the hero of the story is a "handicapped" manager. Woman, just returning from her maternity leave and on the top of that even a non-specialist in IT in the Silicon Valley...

Even is the topic is very hard, the book is an easy-to-read entertainment, I have red it on the train within my few hours of travelling to countryside...

The Concept*

* https://www.tablegroup.com/books/dysfunctions

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team outlines the root causes of politics and dysfunction on the teams where you work, and the keys to overcoming them. Counter to conventional wisdom, the causes of dysfunction are both identifiable and curable. However, they don't die easily. Making a team functional and cohesive requires levels of courage and discipline that many groups cannot seem to muster.

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The Model

• Dysfunction #1: Absence of Trust

  The fear of being vulnerable with team members prevents the building of trust within the team.

• Dysfunction #2: Fear of Conflict

  The desire to preserve artificial harmony stifles the occurrence of productive ideological conflict.

• Dysfunction #3: Lack of Commitment

  The lack of clarity or buy-in prevents team members from making decisions they will stick to.

• Dysfunction #4: Avoidance of Accountability

  The need to avoid interpersonal discomfort prevents team members from holding one another accountable.

• Dysfunction #5: Inattention to Results

  The pursuit of individual goals and personal status erodes the focus on collective success.

David Noonan: Aesop and the CEO: Powerful business Insights from Aesop ’s Ancient Fables

Aesop was a slave in the sixth century, having a hunchback and suffering from a speech impediment, however quickly gaining his freedom through his unique intelligence, bright talent, and tactfulness.

From that time on he could freely travel, increasingly spreading (even with eminent minds of those times) his wisdom with others.

As the Ambassador of the King Croesus at that time was often dedicated to complicated diplomatic missions, indeed resolving frequent conflicts, he did regularly turn to his didactic stories, which in those days were cascaded by word of mouth, even after several hundreds of years of his death, until an Athenian politician finally started to collect them. It may come as a surprise to think that a collection of ancient didactic fables written by a slave, could be such a refreshing and useful read even in today’s business life!

The short booklet of these one-minute stories presents number of leadership challenges; about negotiation, workforce recruitment and dismissal, purchasing, marketing, company management and controlling. What is in this collection of stories so nicely linked from the ancient world to today’s modern days’ challenges? From everpresent human dilemmas, from the battle between good and bad to undeniable moral teachings – in other words an emphasis on the crucial ethical considerations ofbusiness life!

This book is even more interesting, including the commentaries of successful businessmen and public figures as a supplement to the teachings; for example written by Bill Gates, Colin Powell and Oprah Winfrey.

Hundreds of years of wisdom – in an easy to digest form. An entertaining travel mate on a flight trip, an anecdote based, stimulating collection of stories, an essential aid to starting up brainstorming when preparing a business case presentation!

Eric Abrahamson and David Freedmann: A Perfect Mess: the Hidden Benefits of Disorder

We’ve been told in our childhood that „Tidiness is the essence of harmony”, yet we may often conclude that we do indeed pay a heavy price for the relative order that is maintained around us.

This book calls our attention to the fact that in many cases one can save high cost by keeping mess to a certain degree, particularly in the area of creativity, which begins when order ends!

As an example they mention the discovery of penicillin, which was due to the analysis of a patch of mould that was found by Alexander Fleming in a messy Saint Mary’s hospital laboratory.

A paradigm shift is about the importance of certain mess, saying „early planning means double planning” in other words it’s not worth thinking too far ahead, rather better to adapt to the problems when facing.

The same adaptiveness and flexibility is adviced, saying if not sticking to pre-planned time schedules, but allowing actions to take on the spur of the moment can lead to results far beyond our expectations. The writers warn us of the unblessed consequences of an overly clean household, since maintaining such cleanliness requires continuous effort, and demands energy from each family members, while maniac attitude towards tidiness detracts the atmosphere of happiness in a home, furthermore the frequent use of detergents simply stimulate the emergence of bacterial strains.

The cleaning sector is a naturally big business, apart from the sales of detergents and cleaning agents, the use of wardrobes, filing systems, shelves, bins, compartments, and classifiers on offer, all suggest that without such stuff, the ever increasing number of items in use wouldn’t even be found, facing the chaos around.

If we do not keep around a certain degree of healthy mess, then our growing standards of spotlessness will leave us no choice, but to adapt to such standards, and devote even more unnecessary resources to the omnipotence of tidiness.

However the greatest advantage of a healthy degree of mess is that it reduces stress which is caused by the continuous requirement of order!

Ken Blanchard and Mark Miller: The Secret

Ken Blanchard – „the third tenor” has been researching the secret of efficient leadership for several decades. He has published numerous successful books, about the one minute manager, situational leadership, time management and empowerment. What I recommend here is a light 150 paged book, in which the writer follows an imaginary mentoring process, which is quite an easy read. I myself red it once during a sleepless night, picked it up and didn’t put it down until I had finished the whole book in a matter of few hours.

Ken Blanchard highlights in the preface, he believes that performance is dependent on the leaders!

In his story Debbie, a newly appointed leader is terribly disappointed. Nothing seems to be going as smoothly in her department as year earlier, whe she was appointed, enthusiastically acquiring her new position. She registers to the company based mentor programme, so her development is taken over by the president of the company.

After a long conversation, she gets an insight into the meaning of „servicing leadership”, an atmosphere of empowerment where actually a hyerarchical pyramid is turned upside down, in which the customer is „the boss”, and all other functions are held by the subordinated „servants”.

Indeed she becomes aware of the power of both listening and being heard, she learns why leaders’ tasks are crucial in forming the image of positive future prospects, and why recruiting new employees is such a tough, multi-staged selection process which demands great attention.

Regarding selection, Ken Blanhard states that people will have to pay a very high price for making a bad decision. Correcting a bad decision requires time, and demands both mental and emotional energy, not to mention other incremental costs, declining perfomance, the price of missed opportunities, in addition to the fact that in such situations leaders find it hard to face the responsibility for bad decisions, regarding a misjudgment of bad recruitment. Nevertheless if they do not face it, they may lose their credibility, which indeed may have a demoralising impact on performance. He is highlighting that recruitment is a double sided process, as it also gives the candidate the opportunity to ensure that the right decision is made if joining the company.

People follow leaders whom they can trust and respect, they must interpret consistently the company values, in other words they have to represent these values in a congruent, credible way.

Rarely do companies have the necessary, substantial internal resources of the executive leaders’ surplus capacities to support talented, yet in certain circumstances helplessly struggling, sometimes underperforming middles, to develop their leadership skills.

This is when business coaches may step in, bringing the external resources, when because of other business priorities, such resources are not at available within the company.

Jim Collins: Good to Great

Just like the three tenors of the opera: Domingo, Carreras and Pavarotti did form a perfect triad, so do Jim Collins, Ken Blanchard és Steven Covey in business literature!

While Jim Collins is dedicated to find the secrets of organisational efficiency, Ken Blanchard is the founder of leadership models and Steven Covey focuses on personal efficiency.

In 2001 Jim Collins summarized the results of his research, published in a fascinating and exceptionally evocative book. With his 20-members research group, he gained an insight in more than 1435 companies over a period of five years. His objective was to find the secret of the success of the 11 great companies far surpassing all others, achieving outstanding results, breaking through from their former pitiful status, out of the blue like a phoenix flying out of the crowd.

The chosen and analysed companies were not randomly selected; the book explains the reader the a systematic approach, which resulted in certain findings.

He states that mediocre is the enemy of the great – if something is good, and „just about fair enough” , it is one of the main reasons why so few things become exceptional – in education, government and also in business.

He analysed the company management styles in a particularly comprehensive manner, investigating the type of people who were at the helm of these 11 outstanding companies. There is a surprising conclusion; those leaders at the forefront of these successful companies, contrary to popular belief were not the ones heading the front pages of glossy magazines, they were not at all prestige-oriented people! They were rather hubmle leaders who tended to avoid splendid image, but having strong internal power were able to move the entire organisation forward with their incredible performance-result oriented approach.

How do employees of exceptionally successful companies look like? They are liberated, open minded and creative without artistic allures; they are indeed serious, trustworthy, reliable individuals carrying out tasks in a disciplined manner. Being great according to Jim Collins is the result of a unique combination of high level innovativeness mixed with the culture of discipline that makes the paradox but successful essence.

What do great company’s strategy look like? Jim Collins uses an interesting analogy, the hedgehog concept, to express the essence of the great strategy. While the fox dashes away from danger, randomly altering its tactics, the hedgehog is simply rolling up into a perfect ball the first sign of danger, in other words it focuses internally. But what’s inside? Great companies have both clear and fixed guiding principles, which are made up of three common factors that form one foundation of their stategy. First of all, they are aware of the activities they are the best, what they are the best of the world.

Secondly, they enjoy the activity they are specialised in, hence perform with passion and are committed to their job („organisational flow” re-calls once again, the must for happiness and also the secret of success) Last but not least, these organisations are able to find financial interests in these activities, since great companies must generate outstanding profits!

W.Chan Kim- Renée Mauborgne: Blue Ocean Strategy

This title, „Blue Ocean Strategy” is based on an analogy of a market without competition – in other words, the symbol of limitless market opportunities. The ocean is bloody red where the sharks all attack each other, however there are still other, unthouched, blue areas of the ocean which can be found. Decisiveness, inovativeness and courage are needed to recognise the untouched areas where new markets may be discovered, where the water has not yet been blooded.

The book has been a bestseller since its first publication in 2005, expressing a significant market paradigm breakthrough, compared to earlier business and market building principles.

What’s the essence of this new strategic approach? Use of the „STOP, START, CONTINUE”, principle of change management, define what is to be radically finished, what is to begin, and what is to maintain from the traditional ways of doing business and its consistent realisation.

The book demonstrates this with examples, like the famous Cirque de Soleil – a show that shockingly broke away from the traditional circus principle „there is no circus without animal shows”, conflicting with contemporary animal protection principles. Instead of animal shows and clowns Cirque de Soleil created an amazing acrobatic and theatrical show gaining global fame. The captivating world of the, „New Circus” – a new market, targetting an audience who does not any more require and enjoy the unnatural animal-shows.

There is also a wine market example particularly interesting from Hungarian perspective, analising he global success of the Australian, „Kangoroo” labeled Chardonnay. This is a light, almost soft drink, a stardardized, mass produced white wine produced in stable quality at a low cost in large volume, and sold all over the world. To achieve this, they had to drastically break with manual labour, with the mystic traditions of wine making, with elitism and myths associated with this business, with the dependence on annual grape harvest, as well as targeting and broadening the consumers of the the soft drinks market(!) creating a totally new segment on wine market. Understanding the blue ocean strategy we might be able to gain an insight into the mistaken price strategy of the unique and outstanding Hungarian wine Tokaji aszú, and its misleading market positioning, competing on supermarket shelves in dump pricing with theAustralian, „Kangoroo” labeled Chardonnay.

Recent Hungarian example could be also the emergence of the BioHair Hairdressing chain in shopping malls. They also broke away from the necessity of personal trust that epitomised the area of hairdessing and its mystification. However these chains are predictable both in terms of prices and quality, they are fashionable, with a standardized catalogue of hair styles, in addition to being attractive with theirprefixed price ranges and with the consistent use of natural materials and green image, encapsulating a message of the future, and encouraging those who seldom went to the hairdressers in the past, to return them to this market.

I mention this book, because it has an inspiring effect on my future. It’s still too early to share my „blue ocean strategy”, my breakthrough ideas on business coaching that will once navigate me to the undiscovered, blue part of the market ocean!

Imre Lövey and Manohar Nadkarni: How Healthy is Your Organisation

This book published in 2007 discusses the way how joyful, healthy organisations work. Using purposefully the analogy of healthy and ill human organisms, it states that organisations, companies suffer similar effects as a result of illnesses much the same as the human body. When writing about a happy and joyful organisation he describes a healthy organisation, similar to a healthy human body, while listing the possible symptoms for illnesses, he also suggests methods of organisational treatment.

Dedicating a separate chapter on organisational paranoia (lack of trust and fear), its symptoms and its consequence, it explains the essence of workaholism in an organisation, where over-time is classed as something heroic, another example he mentions is an organisational short-sightedness, occuring when for the sake of quick, immediate results long-term planning and stategic thinking disappears.

The book continually seeks how the experience at a workplace may contribute to the creative joy (which is actually the organisational "flow"), listing the typical traps that can hamper this process.

Its main message is if people feel being part of bigger picture, they will generously devote their knowledge and abilities, and engross themselves selflessly in the given activity, and enjoy the joy of self-actualisation.

The task of a leader is not just setting priorities, and producing profits. In a healthy atmosphere, employees are adaptive, handle challenges well, carry out tasks with care, contributing to the success and results of the company, without suffering, or sacrificing their private lives.

This book gives valuable and detailed advice to achieve it. Work is to be a source of joy; experiencing joy while working will result in greater productivity, will provide a sense of freedom and self-actualisation; resulting always great achievements coming from full hearts and souls.