The Advantage: Why Organization Health Trumps Everything

* A Catalyst nugget from Patrick Lencioni, Founder and President of The Table Group, and best-selling author of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

Organizational health is the single biggest advantage that any ministry can have — yet it rarely gets tapped in to.

Unlike many other elements that could create an advantage for an organization or ministry — this is available to EVERYONE!

It’s so simple that most people overlook it,or believe it’s beneath them.

2 requirements for organizational success:

1. Smart — which receives 99% of our time and attention. This includes things like strategy, marketing, finance, technology — this is manageable, controllable. But all companies have smart people.
2. Healthy — which receives about 1% of our time and attention. Organization health involves minimal politics, minimal confusion, high morale, high productivity, low turnover — it can be both emotional and messy, which is why so many organizations give it such little time and attention.

The healthier we are, the more we get to tap into the knowledge. This is what separates the organizations that thrive from those that simply survive.

Four disciplines of a healthy organization:

1. Build and maintain a cohesive leadership team
2. Create clarity
3. Over-communicate clarity
4. Reinforce clarity

 

Mastering the 5 behaviors of a cohesive leadership team:

 

1. Trust — Vulnerability based trust, emotionally buck naked — leaders must go there first!
2. Embrace conflict — Build trust first, but its ok to disagree with one another. If we don’t disagree with the idea or issue, it can fester and become about the person. You have to know that people on your team aren’t holding back there opinions.
3. Commitment — Force clarity and closure.
4. Accountability — Leader has to be willing to be the ultimate accountability, but peers have to be willing to do this. Best leaders are willing to do this for their team members. Confront difficult issues.
5. Results — Focus on collective outcomes

QUESTION:

How much attention do you give to your organizational health?