Introduction xv

The case for organizational health 1

The four Disciplines model 15

Discipline 1: Build a Cohesive Leadership Team 19

Discipline 2: Create Clarity 73

Discipline 3: Overcommunicate Clarity 141

Discipline 4: Reinforce Clarity 153

The Centrality of Great Meetings 173

Seizing the Advantage 189

Checklist for Organizational Health 195

More Resources 199

Notes 201

Acknowledgments 203

About the Author 205

Index 207

Praise for The Advantage

“The Advantage has more common sense in its 200 pages than I have ever found in a business book. A must-read.”
—Colleen Barrett, president emeritus, Southwest Airlines Co.; coauthor, Lead with LUV

“Here is the next business classic. Even the best leaders will read this and wonder, ‘Why aren’t we already doing this?’”
—Enrique Salem, president and CEO, Symantec

“For more than a decade I’ve been using Lencioni’s approach to run the departments I lead, and it has never failed me.”
—Rick Friedel, vice president, AT&T Service Management

“Our teams and leaders have really embraced Lencioni’s methodology. We’ve put these ideas into practice and we’re experiencing the results that prove it works.”
—David Gordon, COO, The Cheesecake Factory

“In The Advantage, Lencioni cuts through the corporate ‘bull’ that creates a culture of stonewalling and feet-dragging, and shows leaders at every level how to build up a culture of productivity and communication.”
—Dave Ramsey, New York Times best-selling author and nationally syndicated radio talk show host

“Organizational health will
one day surpass all other
disciplines in business as
the greatest opportunity
for improvement and
competitive advantage.”

This is the promise of The Advantage, Patrick Lencioni’s bold manifesto about the most unexploited opportunity in modern business. In his immensely readable and accessible style, Lencioni makes the case that there is no better way to achieve profound improvement in an organization than by attacking the root causes of dysfunction, politics, and confusion.

While too many leaders are still limiting their search for advantage to conventional and largely exhausted areas like marketing, strategy, and technology, Lencioni demonstrates that there is an untapped gold mine sitting right beneath them. Instead of trying to become smarter, he asserts that leaders and organizations need to shift their focus to becoming healthier, allowing them to tap into the more-than-sufficient intelligence and expertise they already have.

The author of numerous best-selling business fables including The Five Dysfunctions of a Team and Death by Meeting, Lencioni here draws upon his twenty years of writing, field research, and executive consulting to some of the world’s leading organizations. He combines real-world stories and anecdotes with practical, actionable advice to create a work that is at once a great read and an invaluable, hands-on tool. The result is, without a doubt, Lencioni’s most comprehensive, significant, and essential work to date.