4 Obsessions of Leadership

I read a brilliant book off late named as “The Four Obsessions of An Extraordinary Executive” by Patric Lencioni. It’s inspiring and talks a lot of common sense. The book is designed around 4 basic principles which are essential to build an extraordinary organization.

First, it talks about creating a Cohesive Leadership Team. It is about building a leadership team that understands each other well, works towards same goal and more over goes beyond the day-to-day politics to achieve efficiency. Normally the meetings are intense, and full of critical discussions. They confront each other with their points and they hate the “yes-yes” type of discussion. At the end of it, there is no personal attack, there is only room for “what is best for the organization”. I would say, we build a family(among the leadreship team) within an organization. Unless we understand each family member well, there can't be happiness and success within the family.

Second, it talks about creating organizational clarity. This is essential since everybody must understand clearly about where the organization is heading and hence their efforts will remain unidirectional. Each one of them must be clear on the reason behind organization’s very existence, their competitors, their values, their responsibilities. I believe when the goal is clear, people throw ideas in multiple directions to achieve the same and that diversity of thoughts is key to the future success of the organization.

Third, it stretches on over-communication of organizational goal among the employees. Organizational goals are not very straight forward which can be digested in one go. There has to be multiple mediums in which the same communication has to be conveyed and again it has to be done multiple times. It has to be kept simple as much possible. Unless the whole of organization understands the goal, it will be difficult to achieve success.

Fourth, it talks about reinforcing organizational clarity through human systems. Health of an organization is key to its success. Hence there has to be stringent process for hiring the best suited employees, evaluating their performance at work place, rewarding them as and when required and firing them when they don’t meet the organizational goal. It identifies the human resource development as one of the key criteria for a successful organization. After all the organizational success depends on how each individual contributes to the overall success of the organization.