Space Enough, and Time

One of the most profitable parts of The Advantage for me was Lencioni’s distinction of values in the chapter on creating clarity.  He write a good bit about the mission statement fad of a few years ago and how easy it is for the things that should bring clarity to bring more confusion in the long run.

Lencioni sees four kinds of values: core, aspiration, permission-to-play, and accidental.  Core values, he asserts, are “two or three– behavioral traits that are inherent in an organization.”  These are things that have been at play for a long time, long before someone sits down to figure out core values.  Aspirational values, on the other hand, are the values you hope to encourage and instill in those you work with.  These are not things you already possess (but would like to).  Permission-to-play values, according to Lenin, are “the minimum behavioral standards that are required in an organization.”  Lencioni lists honesty, integrity, and respect for others as examples of this kind of value.  Finally, you’ve got the accidental values.  These are the things that creep in over time, things that no one set out to make important but that became important regardless.

While I find permission-to-play and accidental values interesting, core and aspirational values are the ones that I imagine most organizations need to tackle first.  “Who are we already?” and “who do we want to become?” are vital to any kind of moving forward.

I mentioned in a post last week about how “lone ranger” teaching can seem.  It’s always interesting (and jarring), then, when you have to work well with others in some broader context.  That’s when words like “team” get thrown around.

I really like the take that Patrick Lencioni has on the concept of the team in The Advantage.  From the chapter on building a cohesive leadership team:

The word team has been so overused and misused in society that it has lost much of its impact.  The truth is, few groups of leaders actually work like a team, or at least not the kind that is required to lead a healthy organization.  Most of the resemble what Jon Katzenbach and Douglas Smith, authors of the book, The Wisdom of Teams, call a “working group.”

A good way to understand a working group is to think of it like a golf team, where players go off and play on their own and then get together and add up their scores at the end of the day. A real team is more like a basketball team, one that plays together simultaneously, in an interactive, mutually dependent, and often interchangeable way.  Most working groups reflexively call themselves teams because that’s the word society uses to describe any group of people who are affiliated in their work.

This distinction would constitute fighting words for some of the athletes and coaches that I know.  I get the sense and distinction that Lencioni is going for, though.  There’s something about the give-and-take you find in a real team dynamic that isn’t repeatable (or even possible) in other group situations.