Wits: Knowledge and Information Management

THE FIVE DYSFUNCTIONS OF A TEAM: A LEADERSHIP FABLE / [by] Patrick Lencioni. -- San Francisco : Jossey-Bass, Ã?Â©2002. -- 230p. -- MGMT HD 66 LEN
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677 days ago

During the BMS course in April 2011 Thomas recommended the book The five dysfunctions of a team. He also gave us one hand-out based on it. Having read the book I can tell you that it informed the BMS course, but was not plagiarized by them.
Leadership fables are a wonderful new genre. They are true fables, namely stories that teach lessons. They are very easy to read, and the lessons stick.
In The five dysfunctions of a team the author, Lencioni, describes a two-year-old IT company in Silicon Valley, near San Francisco, California. This company has lots of money, good products and star employees. It is not failing, but it is underperforming. It does not have its rightful share of the market. The board decided to offer the CEO a lower job, and he was happy to accept it, as he was not comfortable as CEO. They replaced him with a woman, Kathryn, and she sets about rescuing the company from its underperformance.
Kathryn spends two weeks just watching. The previous CEO Jeff -- continues to run the company. And so we learn about the senior management team. I became completely engrossed in the story. Suddenly I was seeing myself as a supervisor might see me. It was a chastening experience. I warmly recommend this book to you. It is most worthwhile to see the wider picture, and appreciate our roles as middle- managers in it. You do not have to agree with all Lencioni`s theories either, for example, his strong belief in corporate retreats.
The chief technologist, Martin, thinks he is more important than the others. He comes to meetings but always opens his laptop and does his e-mails. He only speaks when someone makes an incorrect statement, or says something he sees as threatening to his division. He is sarcastic and horrible. Kathryn gets him to stop doing other work during meetings. She improves the quality of the meetings. Martin gradually becomes a team player.
The marketing manager, Mickey, is brilliant, but annoys the others by looking smug during meetings. If anyone disagrees with her she rolls her eyes. She says,` I can tell you the problems this company has are not due to marketing`. She resists attending a training session for all sales people. She says, `I don`t need any of you. She clearly has an ego problem. She prints brochures on a new product before the salesmen have finished their customer research. She is very self-satisfied. So Kathryn fires Mickey. Mickey is thunderstruck. She had not seen it coming. She was so full of herself.
These are few of the interesting things on the book.

Thanks for reading
Mark Sandham
Education Librarian