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Advantage, The MP3 CD – Unabridged, April 1, 2014
There is a competitive advantage out there, arguably more powerful than any other. Is it superior strategy? Faster innovation? Smarter employees? No, New York Times bestselling author, Patrick Lencioni, argues that the seminal difference between successful companies and mediocre ones has little to do with what they know and how smart they are, and more to do with how healthy they are. In this book, Lencioni brings together his vast experience and many of the themes cultivated in his other bestselling books and delivers a first: a cohesive and comprehensive exploration of the unique advantage organizational health provides.
Simply put, an organization is healthy when it is whole, consistent, and complete; when its management, operations and culture are unified. Healthy organizations outperform their counterparts, are free of politics and confusion, and provide an environment where star performers never want to leave. Lencioni’s first non-fiction book provides leaders with a groundbreaking, approachable model for achieving organizational health—complete with stories, tips, and anecdotes from his experiences consulting to some of the nation’s leading organizations. In this age of informational ubiquity and nano-second change, it is no longer enough to build a competitive advantage based on intelligence alone. The Advantage provides a foundational construct for conducting business in a new way—one that maximizes human potential and aligns the organization around a common set of principles.
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherBrilliance Audio
- Publication dateApril 1, 2014
- Dimensions5.5 x 5.5 x 0.25 inches
- ISBN-101491510803
- ISBN-13978-1491510803
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“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
“We are doing what most said could not be done in a down economy—start and exponentially grow a business. Using Lencioni’s model for organizational health is an everyday choice and a way of life for our company.” —Liz Townsend, COO, My Fit Foods
“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 bestselling author and nationally syndicated radio talk show host
About the Author
Patrick M. Lencioni is founder and president of The TableGroup, a management consulting firm specializing in organizational health and executive team development. As a consultant and keynote speaker, he has worked with thousands of senior executives in organizations ranging from Fortune 500 and mid-size companies to start-ups and nonprofits. Lencioni is the author of nine business books with over three million copies sold worldwide. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and four boys.
Product details
- Publisher : Brilliance Audio; Unabridged edition (April 1, 2014)
- Language : English
- ISBN-10 : 1491510803
- ISBN-13 : 978-1491510803
- Item Weight : 3.5 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.5 x 5.5 x 0.25 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,660,650 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2,982 in Systems & Planning
- #5,633 in Books on CD
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Patrick Lencioni is founder and president of The Table Group, a firm dedicated to helping leaders improve their organizations’ health since 1997. His principles have been embraced by leaders around the world and adopted by organizations of virtually every kind including multinational corporations, entrepreneurial ventures, professional sports teams, the military, nonprofits, schools, and churches.
Lencioni is the author of ten business books with over three million copies sold worldwide. His work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, Fortune, Bloomberg Businessweek, and USA Today.
Prior to founding The Table Group, Lencioni served on the executive team at Sybase, Inc. He started his career at Bain & Company and later worked at Oracle Corporation.
Lencioni lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and their four sons.
To learn more about Patrick and The Table Group, please visit www.tablegroup.com.
Customer reviews
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Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers find this business book insightful, helping them evaluate their organization and providing a comprehensive approach to organizational health. The book is easy to understand and read, with clear concepts and actionable ideas. They appreciate its focus on clear communication and consider it worth the price. The content receives mixed reactions, with some praising its no-nonsense approach while others find it lacking depth.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Customers find the book insightful, particularly as an introduction to organizational health, and one customer notes how it helps lay out the context for vision and values work.
"...Nope. It is so simple and practical, I think Lencioni was a bit embarrassed to put so many cookies on the bottom shelf...." Read more
"...Just one thing with The Advantage, no parable, just an incredible combination of teaching in all his books to lay not only why organizational health..." Read more
"...of organizations and how to work them, with a whole lot of positive ways of thinking that would help many a company work better and, as W. Edwards..." Read more
"...In his latest book, "The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business," Lencioni pulls together the many separate themes..." Read more
Customers find the book engaging and worth their time, describing it as one of the best business books written.
"...I thought to myself, "These 50 pages are so transformational--if teams apply the wisdom with discipline and desire--it doesn't matter if the other..." Read more
"...Moving building from theory to practice builds on 5 behaviors: Trust, Mastering Conflict, Achieving Commitment, Embracing Accountability, and..." Read more
"..."It's a choice." * Discipline 2: Create Clarity. Six questions help to clarify, including, "why do we exist? What do we do? Who does what?..." Read more
"...leadership team, Create clarity, Over-communicate clarity, and Reinforce clarity. Here's a little description of each one:..." Read more
Customers find the book easy to read, appreciating its clear writing style and simple concepts.
"...And it's so simple--it may well be the death knell for us consultant types. (Buy the book and you won't need us anymore!)..." Read more
"...What do we do?This should be the easiest to answer, and should be clear and straight forward. 4) How will we succeed?..." Read more
"...This is—as he says—pretty simple stuff to understand, but it all needs to be done together to be effective, lest any one part short-circuit any other..." Read more
"...the signs within an organization that include, minimal politics, low confusion, strong morale, high productivity and very low turnover...." Read more
Customers appreciate the actionable ideas in the book, with one customer highlighting the practical strategies for improving team dynamics and another noting the real-life exercises provided.
"...all of this on page 173, in his next to last chapter, "The Centrality of Great Meetings." I couldn't agree more...." Read more
"...building from theory to practice builds on 5 behaviors: Trust, Mastering Conflict, Achieving Commitment, Embracing Accountability, and Focusing on..." Read more
"...talks to us in plain language interspersed with concrete, real-world examples. Finally. What is the advantage?..." Read more
"...a church, school, or international corporation must build trust, master conflict, achieve commitment, embrace accountability and focus on results. "..." Read more
Customers find the book worth every penny, with one mentioning it's particularly good for profit-based companies.
"...Yet it is ignored by most leaders even though it is simple, free and available to anyone who wants it."..." Read more
"...Yet it is ignored by most leaders even though it is simple, free, and available to everyone who wants it."..." Read more
"...- The clear outline of purpose, values, and alignment, and the no-nonsense discussion of the humanity thereof. Spot on...." Read more
"...Definitely one worth picking up if you are a leader." Read more
Customers appreciate how the book summarizes Lencioni's other works, with one customer noting it provides a comprehensive overview of his fable books.
"...greatest advantage any company can achieve," says this plain-speaking author/consultant (blessed with wit and wisdom) "is organizational health...." Read more
"...I enjoy the details in his other books that are brought to life with his business fables...." Read more
"...It also addresses the Who (the leader) and the How with regard to getting it done...." Read more
"The author was authentic by delivering a lot of empirical data. I appreciate the many illustrative examples of real life companies...." Read more
Customers appreciate the book's emphasis on clear communication.
"...The Playbook (a few pages, on the desk and in every meeting), Cascading Communication, Performance Management..." Read more
"...For effective communications, for example, a healthy organization deals in daily check-ins, weekly tactical staff meetings, monthly strategic..." Read more
"...outlines clear, actionable strategies for improving team dynamics, communication, and clarity within an organization...." Read more
"...build a cohesive leadership team, (2) create clarity, (3) overcommunicate clarity, and (4) reinforce clarity...." Read more
Customers have mixed reactions to the book's content, with some appreciating its no-nonsense approach and minimal politics, while others find it lacking in depth and substance.
"...outline of purpose, values, and alignment, and the no-nonsense discussion of the humanity thereof. Spot on...." Read more
"...For those of you who love the parable style, be warned this book is not a parable...." Read more
"...by reading the signs within an organization that include, minimal politics, low confusion, strong morale, high productivity and very low..." Read more
"...Healthy organizations are ones in which there are minimal politics, minimal confusion, high morale, high productivity, and low turnover...." Read more
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Top reviews from the United States
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- Reviewed in the United States on March 28, 2012Leaders who read my book reviews know I'm on a perpetual trek (or is it a treadmill?) to find gold in them thar hills--culminating in my Top-10 books of the year list. I just found one--and it will take a rare gem to knock this one off its current perch as my Number One pick of 2012.
Any new book by Patrick Lencioni is worth the read, but this treasure--published just this month and already on the Wall Street Journal's Top-10 business books list--is in a class by itself.
Lencioni says that "bad meetings are the birthplace of unhealthy organizations and good meetings are the origin of cohesion, clarity and communication." He adds, "If someone were to offer me one single piece of evidence to evaluate the health of an organization, I would not ask to see its financial statements, review its product line, or even talk to its employees or customers: I would want to observe the leadership team during a meeting."
And he says all of this on page 173, in his next to last chapter, "The Centrality of Great Meetings." I couldn't agree more. As Lencioni points out--your meetings are a barometer of everything else.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. Why is this such a spectacular book? What moves it from fad-of-the-quarter, ho-hum pablum, to YOU MUST BUY THIS TODAY for every person on your senior team?
I ordered 24 copies for a CEO Dialogues roundtable last week--after reading just the first 50 pages. I thought to myself, "These 50 pages are so transformational--if teams apply the wisdom with discipline and desire--it doesn't matter if the other 150 pages are even readable."
Lencioni, who has sold more than three million business "fables," calls this book a "comprehensive, practical guide"--and it is. His goal was to bring all of the ideas from his eight books and consulting practice under the roof of one book--and he did. This one, especially, is brilliant.
"The single greatest advantage any company can achieve," says this plain-speaking author/consultant (blessed with wit and wisdom) "is organizational health. Yet it is ignored by most leaders even though it is simple, free and available to anyone who wants it." He builds his case quickly--not with fables this time but with real life peeks behind unnamed company closed doors. (Not all business or nonprofit/church leaders have it together, we soon learn.)
His model for organizational health is centered on four disciplines:
1) Build a Cohesive Leadership Team
2) Create Clarity
3) Overcommunicate Clarity
4) Reinforce Clarity
Is this just another yada, yada, yada or a big pile of nada, nada, nada? Nope. It is so simple and practical, I think Lencioni was a bit embarrassed to put so many cookies on the bottom shelf. But that's what sets this apart from all the other books in recent years--it's a comprehensive approach that any team can implement. And it's so simple--it may well be the death knell for us consultant types. (Buy the book and you won't need us anymore!)
In what I term the "Superman Syndrome," Peter Drucker said "No institution can possibly survive if it needs geniuses or supermen to manage it. It must be organized in such a way as to be able to get along under a leadership composed of average human beings." Thus Lencioni skillfully delivers exceptional goods--for all of us average players.
Organizational health is like a family, comments Lencioni. "If the parents' relationship is dysfunctional, the family will be too." He adds, "Teamwork is not a virtue. It is a choice--and a strategic one." He paints the picture of what healthy teams look like, starting with the basics: size of teams, specific agendas when the team meets, and frequency and types of team meetings and staff meetings.
His five team behaviors (think of a pyramid from the ground up) of Trust, Conflict, Commitment, Accountability and Results--are defined and explained in practical, practical ways in the first 70 pages. He writes, "The ultimate point of building greater trust, conflict, commitment and accountability is one thing: the achievement of results. That seems obvious, but as it turns out, one of the greatest challenges to team success is the inattention to results." (Three cheers for the Results Bucket!)
"Discipline 2: Create Clarity" is really a short-course in strategic planning without all the buzz words. His page on "BLATHER" is hilarious. "Though I can't be sure, I suspect that at some point about thirty years ago a cleverly sadistic and antibusiness consultant decided that the best way to screw up companies was to convince them that what they needed was a convoluted, jargon, and all-encompassing declaration of intent." (Think: vision and mission statements!)
I gotta end this review--but, really, I haven't even enticed you to the deep end of the pool yet. You MUST buy this book and read about: The Two-Headed CEO, the six key questions to create clarity, The Playbook (a few pages, on the desk and in every meeting), Cascading Communication, Performance Management ("Healthy organizations believe that performance management is almost exclusively about eliminating confusion."), The Price of Passivity, Behaviors Versus Measurables, The Universal Challenge of Peer Accountability, and Chief Reminder Officer.
- Reviewed in the United States on August 7, 2012The realization of the importance of organizational health is coming, and Patrick Lencioni's new book, The Advantage is leading the way. Lencioni is one of my favorite writers, his ability to weave together a story/parable that connects and then lay out principles that transform is always a winning recipe.
Just one thing with The Advantage, no parable, just an incredible combination of teaching in all his books to lay not only why organizational health trumps everything else in business (and other organizations too), but even more how to build such organizational health in your organization. Yes, there are incredible stories of how these principles have worked in his organizational life as well as those he has consulted (with names changed of course to protect both the guilty and the innocent). It's a great advantage of the book -- not just a great story in theory, but great stories gathered together from actual life experiences.
The opening line of chapter 1 captures the premise of the book, "The single greatest advantage any company can achieve is organizational health. Yet it is ignored by most leaders even though it is simple, free, and available to everyone who wants it."
In pursuing such organizational health, Lencioni works through a 4 disciplines model:
DISCIPLINE 1. Build a cohesive leadership team.
As Patrick says, "Teamwork is not a virtue, it's a choice." He defines a leadership team as "a small group of people who are collectively responsible for achieving a common objective for their organization."
Moving building from theory to practice builds on 5 behaviors: Trust, Mastering Conflict, Achieving Commitment, Embracing Accountability, and Focusing on Results.
I remember these from The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team, especially his charge to "step into the conflict" and how much better organizational health became as I learned to step into the conflict and leverage it towards resolution.
DISCIPLINE 2. Create clarity.
This is my favorite chapter of the book as the not only asks but fleshes out 6 critical questions. Why are they critical? As Patrick writes, "What is new is the realization that none of them can be addressed in isolation; they must be answered together. Failing to achieve alignment around any one of them can prevent an organization from attaining the level of clarity necessary to become healthy."
What are the 6 critical questions? So glad you asked ...
1) Why do we exist? Think core purpose as in Jim Collins, Built to Last
2) How do we behave? Core values that are not the generic one size fits all, but the one size that fits us as in the start up company that identified "willing to sweep floors" as one of its core values. Answers to this question also addressed aspirational, accidental and permission-to-play values.
3) What do we do?This should be the easiest to answer, and should be clear and straight forward.
4) How will we succeed? Strategy is involved here, but Lencioni goes deeper speaking of "Strategic Anchors" (3 strategies that provide the context for all decision making).
5) What is most important right now? Answering this one has the most immediate impact. What is the thematic goal? What is the rallying cry that defines the next 3-6 months of focus?
6) Who must do what?Clarity for division of labor and the advantage of teams that bring multiple perspectives to accomplish the thematic goal.
The challenge I have learned in leadership is to get everyone on the same page. A cohesive team that hammers out their answers to these 6 questions is on the same page, working out of the same playbook.
DISCIPLINE 3. Overcommunicate clarity.
When I first saw this, I thought that's a bit repetitive. Exactly. 7 times to be exact. Patrick emphasizes that this is necessary to pass on the clarity, the answers to the 6 questions, the playbook to the organization.
The value I discovered in this chapter is a commitment for "the team to leave meetings with clear and specific agreements about what to communicate to their employees."
DISCIPLINE 4. Reinforce clarity.
Same as discipline 3, I thought this seems repetitive. Reading the chapter I realized this needs to be repeated from new hires to those who needed to be fired, from recognition, compensation and reward. Clarity, the playbook, the 6 questions, the cohesive commitment builds organizational health.
After laying out the case for the 4 disciplines, Patrick moves on to the advantage of great meetings. Having applied the truths of Death by Meeting to my own leadership team meetings, they do produce greater organizational health and engagement. It's my next step with this book to hammer out our answers to the 6 questions, to build our own playbook.
We have learned to focus our meetings and have found them to provide greater productivity.
The greatest challenge that I picked up from the book is when Patrick writes, "the single biggest factor determining whether an organization is going to get healthier -- or not -- is the genuine commitment and active involvement of the person in charge."
That's why I give The Advantage 5 out of 5 stars. It left me not only wanting to be a better leader of a great organization, but laid out practical principles for making that happen.
Top reviews from other countries
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Mateo EguigurenReviewed in Spain on April 26, 2024
5.0 out of 5 stars Una joya en cuanto a liderazgo
El libro cubre cómo crear un ambiente de confianza para después crear una organización saludable en todos los aspectos cubriendo la cantidad de reuniones, Cómo dar retroalimentación correctamente Y cómo mantener al equipo enfocado en los resultados basado en una cultura de alto rendimiento
Mateo EguigurenUna joya en cuanto a liderazgo
Reviewed in Spain on April 26, 2024
Images in this review
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MiNuSReviewed in France on October 29, 2020
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent livre
Plein de bons conseils qui aident à lever un peu la tête du guidon et reprendre une meilleure trajectoire.
Je recommande à tous les DSI, CEO mais aussi à leur staff qui peuvent aussi les influencer.
- Jonathan GiffordReviewed in the United Kingdom on August 24, 2013
5.0 out of 5 stars Deceptively straightforward; potentially powerful
I was won over by this book. Lencioni reminds me of Marshall Goldsmith ('What Got You Here Won't Get You There' etc.): he offers a great deal of sound, straightforward advice about how to operate successfully within organisations, much of which is in fact based on very insightful observations, based on a lifetime in consultancy, of the way in which people in organisations actually behave and, more importantly, interact.
The book's first chapter is a bit of a hard sell. No shame in that. Lencioni sets out to sell us the idea that organisational health is the most important thing in business - no, I mean THE most important thing. Really, really the most important thing. Did you know that organisational health will give your business a competitive advantage? I mean a really HUGE competitive advantage? That organisational health trumps everything else in business?
You get the point (you really do!) - the chapter reads like one of those maddeningly successful direct marketing mailshots that has you running up a mental white flag by page three and agreeing that, on reflection, your life has indeed been blighted by the absence of whatever they are selling and that you absolutely must ACT NOW to remedy the situation. But Lencioni soon begins to spell out what a healthy organisation would look like and to set out his action plan for improving the health of any organisation, and I began to be won over.
Many books about organisational behaviour offer a brilliant analysis of what is wrong with the organisation and suggest some profound changes that are needed to remedy this, but leave one wondering just how many companies will actually change their behaviour as a result, no matter how compellingly the author has spelled out the advantages. It's not that the new ideas don't make sense, or are not genuinely exciting, it's just that they often require truly fundamental changes to the way that organisations are structured and run. What Lencioni recommends, in contrast, is relatively simple, clearly understandable, and eminently do-able. I found myself recognising all too many of the aspects of unhealthy organisational behaviour but, more importantly, seeing also how Lencioni's recommended solution was sane, practical and achievable. Although Lencioni is not, on the face of it, proposing a radical overhaul of organisational structure, his programme for a healthier way of conducting business would, in fact, have quite profound effects on how organisations are run.
Lencioni starts with 'building a cohesive leadership team', and has interesting things to say about how this involves building a high degree of trust among the leadership team, which involves a greater degree of interpersonal reaction than is usually considered necessary or even desirable. Senior teams tend to relate to each other at the 'purely professional' level, representing their own departmental interests, vying with each other for the boss's attention and focussing mainly on achieving their own agenda while looking more brilliant than their colleagues. Exactly, says Lencioni. Teams like this are not learning from each other, and are certainly not working together to achieve the overall objectives of the organisation. To do this, the leadership team need to be more aware of each other's personal strengths and weaknesses, more prepared to engage in constructive criticism and debate and, as a result, to be individually a little more vulnerable than we are usually comfortable with. Lencioni successfully paints an appealing picture of the benefits of a genuinely cohesive leadership team, working together to achieve common objectives, holding other team members accountable, playing to each other's strengths and reminding each other, in an intelligent and constructive way, of their individual weaknesses.
And then, of course, the team needs to be clear on exactly what those common objectives are: we need 'clarity'. His recommendation for finding clarity is to answer six fundamental questions: Why do we [the organisation] exist? How do we behave? What do we do? How will we succeed? What is most important right now? Who must do what? It's a good and deceptively simple-looking list. The first three of those questions are actually very hard to answer, and any team that knew and fully agreed on all of the answers would indeed have a considerable advantage over the great majority of their competitors.
Lencioni illustrates his points with down-to-earth, recognisable and relevant illustrations from his consulting experience. Having argued for a cohesive leadership team and the need to achieve clarity, the last two points in his four-point action plan seem a little like over-egging the pudding: 'overcommunicate clarity' and 'reinforce clarity'. But the sections addressing these ideas continue to offer sensible, practical suggestions about how to spread a clear understanding of core objectives throughout the organisation and to ensure that the clarity persists.
I especially liked Lencini's focus on 'what is the most important thing right now'. It is difficult, but literally invaluable, for organisations to be clear on 'why we exist', 'how we behave' and 'what we do' but even with clarity on these defining ideals, organisations are often still derailed by failing to focus enough on some fundamental issue that threatens their very existence. 'The high point of being a leader in an organisation is wrestling with difficult decisions and situations,' writes Lencioni, while pointing out that, in practice, leadership teams tend to try to deal with such fundamental, life or death business issues far too superficially in a badly structured meeting that is attempting to achieve several other things at the same time.
His recommendation for a programme of meetings with different purposes and functions is, again, pragmatic and entirely sane. What, as Lencioni says, could be more exciting than addressing a core business issue in a constructive and focussed 'adhoc topical meeting' with a team of committed colleagues, and without anything else on the agenda but finding a solution to the particular business problem? And how often in business does that actually happen?
A deceptively simple and very readable book that offers achievable suggestions for changes to our working practises that would have profound effects on our effectiveness - and on the satisfaction that we get from our working lives.
Jonathan Gifford - author of '100 Great Business Leaders'
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Amazon KundeReviewed in Germany on April 6, 2017
4.0 out of 5 stars Sehr empfehlenswert, speziell für "Neulinge"
Sehr empfehlenswertes, leicht verständliches und unterhaltsam geschriebenes Buch. Gibt eine gute Übersicht und Einführung in das Thema mit abwechslungsreichen Beispielen.
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Rodrigo MesquitaReviewed in Brazil on November 20, 2018
5.0 out of 5 stars Realmente um imensa vantagem
Um livro de cabeceira para CEOs ou todos aqueles que querem entender como uma organização saudável funciona. Leitura rápida, leve e muito interessante.