The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive

I've enjoyed the author's other books. This one did not work for me. In his other fables, there's often a dialogue where the characters talk about the principles being explained by the fable. Here Rich is a CEO whose doing it “right”, and Vince is a CEO of an identical organization doing it “wrong”.

Following the pattern of previous books, I expected Rich to explain to Vince his 4 principles for running his organization, and then to watch how Vince applied those and turned his company around. Sadly, the fable abruptly ends and this second act was left to the reader's imagination.

I've previously read [book: Death By Meeting] by [author: Patrick Lencioni]. I really connect with his ability to tell an engaging story which communicates the point. He then spends the last third of this book describing the four principals and how to put them into practice within the organization.

The four disciplines of a healthy organization are:
1. Build and Maintain a Cohesive Leadership Team
2. Create Organizational Clarity
3. Over-Communicate Organizational Clarity
4. Reinforce Organizational Clarity Through Human Systems

While there is a very big focus on executive teams and high level managers, this book can be used for leaders who are putting together smaller teams. The truth is that at every level of the organization there need to be teams who understand the values and are comfortable with each-other.

I especially appreciated Patrick's explanation of how to define clarity and communicating vision and mission. I also appreciated his focus on how important a healthy organization is, even more important than higher revenue and large clients.
I also appreciated that there were a few concrete examples provides as well as questions to help us define our own answers and to model our organization.

This is definitely a great read for anyone who manages teams of people or defines the direction of an organization.