Patrick Lencioni, in his YouTube video, The Four Disciplines of a Healthy Organization, illuminates on the four steps an organization should take to stay healthy, also referred to as the four disciplines in his new book (Lencioni, 2013).

The topic can be applied to management by going through all the four steps of keeping an organization healthy, which includes creating an interrelated leadership team, establish clarity, over-communicate clarity, and reinforce transparency (Lencioni, 2013).

The initial step is to build a team that behaves functionally and cohesively. When the people depended on to run an organization, be it a startup company, a corporation, a school, or a restaurant, act in a dysfunctional manner, the dysfunction will spread to the entire organization and hinder organizational health.

Secondly, the team forming the leadership ought to have its focus on the critical questions. They need to establish clarity on the organization’s priorities in the short- and long-term to ensure those below them are sure about what they should do to make the organization successful.

After the organization has passed the behavioral and intellectual alignment steps, leaders need to over-communicate (by constantly repeating themselves) to reinforce what is important for organization growth.

Lastly, the approaches such as hiring, decision-making, and performance management need to reinforce clarity in the organization by ensuring that they are designed to accentuate and support uniqueness.

One point I found surprising is that although a healthy organization can fail, it hardly ever occurs (Lencioni, 2013). Arguably, when dysfunction, ambiguity, and politics are lowered to the minimum, individuals are empowered to solve issues, serve consumers, design items, and assist each other to recover from setbacks and create more opportunities that they could not have anticipated.

Reference

Lencioni, P. (Director). (2013). The Four Disciplines of a Healthy Organization [Motion Picture].