Skip to main content

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

So I'm back in reading mode just a little. I've started reading the books we have here in my new office, which are pretty good! I enjoyed this one quite a bit, and since this was my first experience with Lencioni, I didn't have this reaction (from Slacker Manager) to the narrative portion of the book. The narrative part has a CEO walking her dysfunctional team thru the five dysfunctions, which are shown as a pyramid in this order:

Inattention to results
Avoidance of accountability
Lack of commitment
Fear of conflict
Absense of trust

Basically, it all starts with there not being trust and the others sort of flow from that. The narrative piece is useful because it walks you thru what this could actually look like in real life. And the exposition of the model in the back is useful as well.

The narrative story ends up fixing the company, but the CEO had to fire someone, and someone had to quit. I guess that if those things hadn't happened the fictive company would have failed.


Popular posts from this blog

An Army of Davids

So, I've been spending some time with Glenn Reynold's book (Glenn being of course the seminal and highly influential Instapundit ), and I must say that it gives me lots of language I can use to talk about phenomena that are easily observable right now. I think you could say that Glenn Reynolds has done for technology what Virginia Postrel did with design topics . Which is to say, they beat the drum and say, hey, look at what this democratization of knowledge can do for you! In that vein, the book is really pretty visionary, pointing out the magic of the internet age. And I for one see it as magical. You know how Laura Ingalls Wilder's Pa in Little Town on the Prairie said to Laura that it was an amazing time to be alive (that was in the 1890s)? I've been actively thinking that to myself for the past few years, and An Army of Davids gives me ample evidence to back that up with its talk of citizen empowerment and the "comfy chair revolution." The theme of ...

Never Eat Alone

Okay, I've reached the height of laziness. I'll explain later. My excuse is that I'm on the road. I came back to BYU for a homecoming reunion since I'm the treasurer of an alumni chapter (very easy job, since we have no money). And of course we trashed UNLV at the game! Also, I've wrapped a bunch of work into the trip out west so I'm doing Utah, Idaho, Arizona and possibly Nevada if I get time. Here is a picture of campus. The Y is on the mountain, and they light it up at special occasions such as homecoming. The reason why there is only a Y is that they started to put BYU up there and they ran out of money or something. So now it's just the Y and that's what we call the school for shorthand. Okay, so now to the lazy part. I brought a jillion books with me and I'm trying to plow through them and send them back media mail. I read the book Never Eat Alone , by Keith Ferrazzi. The book treats the topic of networking, and does it really very well--and re...