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Summary: Excellent Team Insights
Review: This is a very well written book on the dysfunctions that teams experience. I highly recommend this book as a primer to an off-site team building session.
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Summary: Hit me where my team is.
Review: This was bull's eye for me and my team. I'm in the 4th year of a leadership position at a university. We've got a great team and have accomplished a lot in the last 4 years. Now we've had budget cuts because of a reduction in state allocations, and everyone's morale has suffered. What has worried me, though, has been a deterioration in the apparent commitment of my leadership team to the success of our college. This showed up initially in fights over resources after reallocation decisions had already been made, and in complaints about the decisions that were broadcast outside the team. "The Five Dysfunctions" identified the very things that were worrying me, assured me they were problems, helped me recognize the root cause, and showed me a way to deal with them. I'm eager to go to work tomorrow!
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Summary: Eye Opener
Review: After recently reading two other books on the subject of teams, Patrick Lencioni's "The Five Dysfunctions of a Team" takes the cake. Mr. Lencioni's book is not only insightful but also entertaining. In just a few short hours, I had finished reading his thought-provoking work. He pinpointed the exact areas my team had been struggling with. As a leader, I am now striving to put the philosophies he shares throughout "The Five Dysfunctions" into practice with my own team.
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Summary: This book is excellent
Review: This book is excellent. Lencioni does a superb job at making tangible the sometimes-elusive art of management and leadership. Having a finance / accounting background and now working in general management I always find the "soft stuff" (HR, organizational development, management, leadership) is really the "hard stuff" (as opposed to finance, engineering, programming, etc.). Lencioni's success is based in the fact that he unequivocally understands, as he states, "The ultimate test of a great team is results". While many authors and management tacticians obfuscate the skill of management through complex theory and practices Lencioni brings clarity. Very similar to Jim Collin's "Good to Great", the beauty of this book can be summed up in its third to last line: "Success is not a matter of mastering subtle, sophisticated theory, but rather of embracing common sense with uncommon level of discipline and persistence."
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Summary: Truth in the Dysfunctions
Review: Great book. The author puts the lesson in a very easy to understand story! I had my team read it as ag roup and review it. It pointed out our dysfunctions, allowing us to fix them. I highly recommend this book to anyone leading a group of people, from a manager to a preacher to a coach!
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Summary: Wonderful book!
Review: The book is quick reading and if you've read Lencioni's other fables, the style will ring familiar. The short chapters end with foreshadowing that makes you want to read on and see what the team finally comes to learn. His message is crisp and clear and while it is simple, really most management principles are. What is difficult in real world practice, is delivering on the ideas. He provides good food for thought in "Kathryn", the company CEO, who strategically brings her team to their own understanding of why "working at teamwork" can be more important than closing deals and gathering market share. In the final chapters he provides some good ideas for additional exercises companies can try to bring forth some of the same outcomes. In today's economy, a lot of companies have downsized to the point where executive teams are carrying very heavy loads, while constantly looking over their shoulders to see when the next train might be coming. We'd be wise to start looking at the impact of these changes on company productivity.
While one reviewer here suggested the mythical company used in the case example sounded too contrived, I saw in the myth several different companies I've worked for described to the detail!
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Summary: One of the best books...
Review: I bought a copy for everyone in my company. They have already started to work as s team. The book is easy to read, entertaining and relavent to the real world. This book has changed my life and my company, forever.
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Summary: Superficial non-"real world" advice
Review: I am an avid reader, especially of books in the self-help and management classification. I must honestly say that in the last 10 years, this book ranks as the WORST book I have read in the area of management and leadership. To be fair, it is well written, and an easy read. In fact I was able to read it in just two sittings during travel. Moreover, the overall concepts that the author presents are clear and seem reasonable. So why the bad review? The fact is the author takes a far too simplistic approach to dealing with the frailties and motivations of individuals. The fictional case study is far too perfect. It is like watching a re-run of "Father Knows Best" and using that as the typical American Family. It is nice to think it, but in practice the world is not that way. The book does not do justice to some of the real world issues in team leadership: backstabbing employees, co-dependent relationships, substance abuse, neurosis, and overall un-manageable people. While the book presents some general principals which might work in a "laboratory setting" the leader who trys to follow this verbatim may be in for a shock at the results.
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Summary: There is No Better Book About Managing Teams
Review: I have to admit that I had somewhat limited expectations for this book. I was worried that this book would simply be a re-hash of the same material written in the first two books by this author. So often, it seems that the creator of a very successful and revolutionary paradigm (and Pat Lencioni's first books were certainly both of those) will put out a whole series of books that explain the same concept with a slightly different spin. Fortunately, that isn't the case here - - This is one of the most powerful business books I've ever read. While the themes in this book are very consistent with the author's first book, the approach is completely different. The first book forced me to constantly look inward and ask myself what I could be doing better as a CEO. This book was much more team oriented, helping me to guide everyone of my direct reports in how they could be better managers and how we can function more cohesively as a team. I can't say enough about how eye opening the book was in terms of my ability to instantly improve the effectiveness of my entire team. I'm going to give this book to everyone on my team and plan to have a group discussion of what each of us learned from the book. The book is a VERY quick read (probably an hour cover to cover) and will make a thoughtful manager completely re-think whether his or her team is optimally managed. The book allows you to quickly diagnose the area where your team has weakness and almost instantly chart a well defined course for a much more productive team. I sincerely believe I'm a much better manager after reading this book and my approach to guiding my team is much more enlightened. For those with the courage to truly examine the way they manage and the commitment to seek out a better way, you won't find a better investment of 60 minutes of your time.
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Summary: Highlights obstacles to winning teams
Review: Teamwork is the key to effective business strategies, yet despite the hype, real teamwork remains an elusive goal for any business managers. Five Dysfunctions Of A Team highlights obstacles to winning teams and tells how to overcome them, using a fictional type narrative to demonstrate points. Entering the new breed of business novels is a title which uses a fictional overcoat to impart the basics of solid business suggestions. Recommended.
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