5 Groups of 3

It’s been a while since I’ve posted a piece strictly focused on a practical business theme. With the kickoff of the 2014 business year I’ve had many conversations with business owners and senior level executives that have led me to a review of some “themes” that seem to perpetually re-occur around organizational effectiveness.

From my experience in corporate settings and as a consultant and a facilitator of CEO roundtables I’ve boiled a broad array of management disciples and best practices down into what I call “5 Groups of 3”. It is a collection of concepts that I believe are fundamental to executing well and sustaining organizational alignment. These 15 items are indeed disciplines, so it falls on leadership to ensure that they are practiced, instilled and embedded in the culture of their organizations. The “5 Groups of 3” are not self-sustaining and so they will succumb to the all pervasive natural force of entropy that assails every organization – if left unattended.

As I review these Groups you will recognize most of them or versions of them. Some may seem close to themes of professional books you may have read or conference key note speaker speeches you may have heard. Most, you will probably say, are patently intuitive and common sense. You would be right. There is nothing new under the sun. Yet nonetheless, these “5 Groups of 3” represent fundamental best practices most neglected by organizations as they go about their business.

Toward the end of this blog I’ll elaborate a little on some concepts of a gifted and brilliant organizational leadership consultant and best selling author by the name of Patrick Lencioni. My review of the “5 Groups of 3” will channel our attention toward a thesis of Mr. Lencioni’s that is presented in his book titled The Advantage, (Copyright © 2012 Published by Jossey-Bass). Lencioni presents four steps toward combating those “entropic” forces that battle with sustainable organizational alignment and my “5 Groups of 3”.

They say (it’s actually a quote from Jesus found in Matthew 13:57 and in Mark 6:4) that a prophet is not without honor except in his own country. Consultants are the “honorable prophet” because they are the unknown prophet. For some reason we listen more attentively to the words that pass through the lips of strangers who come to us with an unbiased, unemotional, benign, objective perspective more than we do to the committed passionate leaders we know. Another “natural force” I guess.    

So let’s get on with the “prophetic” word – “5 Groups of 3”.

Group #1: The three through which all things get done. Consciousness of these three in building and resourcing and establishing interactive integrated systems of an organization is paramount.

1.     People – Capability, capacity, attitude.

2.     Processes – The optimum ways and methods we use to achieve objectives.

3.     Systems – Measurements & information flow.

Group #2: The three that promote effective organizations, teamwork and team success. Does everyone in the organization have an appropriate and practical view of their role such that they are encouraged to positively:

1.     Visualize ?

2.     Anticipate ?

3.     Communicate ?

Group #3: The Three that ensure strategy execution and goal achievement at the tactical level. Everyone in the organization knows the expectations of:

1.     What

2.     How and

3.     When of their tasks, projects and assignments at any moment.

Group #4: The Three “un-attended” things that dominate the thoughts of every business leader. These three are the substance of all things procrastinated. They need to be consciously acknowledged, illuminated, prioritized, addressed thru high leverage initiatives or dismissed once and for all.

1.     Issues

2.     Problems

3.     Opportunities

Group #5: The Three realities in every enterprise that call upon a leader to lead.

1.     What the organization does well – leaning into these.

2.     What the organization does not do well – mastering or minimizing these.

3.     What the organization does that it needn’t be doing at all anymore – loss leaders, obsolete markets, being too may things to too many people, time killing activities and projects, emotional profit killers ….

So that’s the “5 Groups of 3”.  Easy to list, harder to instill and sustain.

According to Patrick Lencioni, a thing called “organizational health” trumps everything else in business. At the core of his thesis is the importance of values. Lencioni presents four disciplines that he believes will constitute and ensure organizational health which are;

1.     Building a cohesive leadership team,

2.     Creating clarity,

3.     Over-communicating clarity and

4.     Reinforcing clarity.

On the surface, the repeat mention of “clarity” seems a bit redundant – right? Well, not really, when you study items 2, 3 and 4 through Lencioni’s lens. Discipline #2, Creating Clarity, contributes to the achievement of my “5 Groups of 3”. The objective of Creating Clarity is fundamentally the result of a leadership team collectively achieving true alignment around the answers to the following six critical organizational questions:

1.     Why do we exist?

2.     How do we behave?

3.     What do we do?

4.     How will we succeed?

5.     What is most important right now?

6.     Who must do what?

This piece should provide a scaffolding upon which to build your own model for executing well and sustaining organizational alignment for achievement with a measure of immunity to the entropy that saps the energy from so many enterprises. 

I also urge you to read Patrick Lencioni’s book – it is well written, humorous and full of practical examples from real-life organizations.

All the best!

Bill