Lencioni’s “Six questions”

Does your organisation have staff who show up daily without much motivation or desire? Are you sure? They may have no idea what the true purpose of their job is. Lencioni says it is imperative that this “why” be defined before anything else in the organisation.

“There are all kinds of different purposes or reasons for existing,” he notes. 

“The point is, you have to know yours and you have be clear about it because you don’t ever want to violate that. It gives your employees a reason to get out of bed in the morning and it allows them to understand why what they’re doing ultimately matters.”​

Many organisations function without any clear guidelines for behavior. They think this creates flexibility for different types of people to function within the group. Unfortunately, it has unintended consequences: confusion, frustration, and inconsistency.

“When an organisation has no clear values, or worse yet, when they have 12 and they get a thesaurus out and they look up the 12 nicest adjectives they can find to encompass all perfect things, they leave employees without any guidelines for their behavior.”

People crave clarity. His advice? Find the two or three most important behaviors for your company. Your employees will remember them and relax, as they now know what to do. This will help build the right culture and even attract the right clients.

To get the organisation growing, some leaders will try running several different models or opportunities at the same time, often arguing they are all related in some way. When you do too many things, the only guarantee is that you’ll never be great at any particular thing. Lencioni states that it is crucial for companies to analyse and determine whether they are service- or product-focused and what they want to be the best at.

A common belief about the “business” equation or model is: smart idea + great team + great product/service = long-term success. Lencioni believes this leaves out a critical variable, noting that every organisation needs a unique set of strategies that will help them thrive and serve their target customers/constituents well. Once you have those strategic concepts in place,

“We have found that that frees up employees to become more creative and empowered.”

“If everything is important, then nothing is,”  Lencioni insists. He means that many organisations don’t have a clear understanding of how to create priorities. Teams wind up misusing their time. He recommends that organisations find the single most crucial task at hand and look to complete it between the span of three to 12 months. This will give everyone in the organisation something to rally around.​

Does your leadership team attempt to do everything together, or all at once, or both? Lencioni says that’s a surefire way to kill progress. Lencioni recommends clarifying each person’s responsibilities and deliverables in order to develop a clear strategy for moving forward.​