I love Patrick Lencioni and I love his books, wisdom, and style of communicating. He does a great job communicating some complex things in simple modes. The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive is a book I’ve been wanting to get to and I’ve seen summaries of it, but only recently was able to get to.
This book is the intro book more or less to his overall model of organizational health that he unpacks more completely in more recent books. But this provides a good overview.
I’ve been involved in a lot of organizational health and change work lately so this was a helpful resource for me to do some assessment of what I and my team are doing well and where we need to be more intentional with the big picture in mind.
You can get some of the resources free online related to this book and the model included at Lencioni’s site here.
The book demonstrates through fable and a model 4 disciples for executive leaders for the sake of organizational health.
- Build and maintain a Cohesive Leadership Team
- Create Organizational Clarity
- Over-Communicate Clarity
- Reinforce Clarity Through Human Systems
#1 is unpacked further in his well-known book, Five Dysfunctions of a Team, but I’ve been in a perfect space to reflect on all four of these. It’s been both affirming for some of what we’ve been able to do and also encouraging me to persevere in some of these areas for further clarity.
But the biggest value for me was Lencioni unpacking more specifically what each of these things involve. Everyone believes clarity and communication is in important, but Lencioni provides a bit more detail that can help someone get a handle on where to focus their attention.
