The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
I’ve seen this book on so many ‘management’ lists, I finally decided to read it now that I’m taking up a new team. I wish I could find all the people who recommended this book as a 5, and filter out any of their recommendations in the future. The book has a couple of tidbits, but it isn’t worth the time. The fable part is childish and basic enough for a 4th grader to understand. The exercises at the end are very basic – although as a starting point, they are useful I suppose. The book also continues to use the premise throughout the book that ‘we have the best financial resources, the best people, and the best technology, yet…. we lag behind others’… Leading a team with a stacked hand is very different than leading a team without a stacked hand. How do you foster teamwork and achieve success if you don’t have the best financial resources, don’t have the best people, and don’t have the best technology? Very few teams start off with the right people on the bus – step one is getting the right people on the bus a la ‘Good to Great’, and next is watching the right metrics in order to make do with limited resources a la ‘Moneyball’.