Pages

Saturday, August 30, 2014

Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni


So this is one of my annual business reads.  I skimmed it in 2012, so I didnt count that as a read, but I reviewed it back in 2011.  I have committed to study this book every year with my team going forward, and it is amazing how many of these dysfunctions have crept in over the last few years.  It is easy to lose sight of simple behaviors that really contribute to success, even when you have seen them first hand.  It is just hard.  This book describe five "dysfunctions" that teams experience, and how to overcome them.  While I was tempted to give it 5 stars, I'm going to stick with my first review of 4 stars.  All the points I noted there are still valid. While Lencioni isn't going to be writing any best selling fiction any time soon, he is a solid writer and builds characters we can care about, that are real to us, and gives them a meaningful conflict.  That is about all it takes.  From that medium he teaches us his principles of successful teams.

One of the interesting things, for me, is how I still see personal application in the books we read as a team at work, even though I have read them all many times.   Things are better than they were, but I guess I need to read the Influencer book along with every other book I read to make the lessons "stick."  :)

For those who are curious, my annual rotation of books is this: Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Crucial Conversations, Leadership and Self Deception, and the Richest Man in Babylon.  The last book, Richest Man, could be replaced at some point with a more generally applicable business book, but my current workforc really needs to be exposed to basic personal finance principles. The reason Influencer isn't in the list is that I found it to be a method for implementing change, but not instructive on what changes to implement, which is what the other books do.  A lot of overlap exists in the set however, and I like that.  Im always open for suggestions for a Richest Man replacement...

0 comments: