I like Patrick Lencioni, and have read the majority of the books he’s published. Two of them have been extremely helpful: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team and Silos, Politics, and Turf Wars. His latest work is titled, The Advantage—How to Develop Organizational Health. The short of it is that the most important metric for measuring ongoing organizational success is its health. While organizational health is not as snazzy as sales figures and other more discernable data, health is extremely important for an organization if it is going to remain viable and withstand the rapid shifts in our culture and economy. And, as the title suggests, healthy organizations maintain a strong advantage over those that are not healthy.

Lencioni offers four practical suggestions on how to develop organizational health that is beneficial to for profits and not for profits like churches.

The first discipline is to build a cohesive leadership team. Healthy teams are characterized as those where trust is forged through vulnerability and conflict is tolerated around important issues. Team members hold one another accountable for commitments as well as behaviors. Above all, each team member must place the organization above their own private interests.

The second discipline of the healthy organization is to create clarity so that everyone in unified around purposes, values, strategies, and goals. Clarity allows the leadership team to hold in common the significant matters of the organization and to align themselves accordingly. Communication is free because each member of the team is on the same page.

Once clarity is created the team works to over-communicate clarity. Clarity is not achieved until information is thoroughly passed along from the leadership team to the rest of the organization. Each member of the team must leave leadership team meetings with the intent to accurately articulate the six aspects of clarity to each employee.

Finally, clarity is reinforced by communicating the values, goals, purposes, and strategies of the organization to new employees. Those who don’t fit the mold are either coached up or moved out. Compensation and rewards are built around the values and goals of the organization.

I mentioned at the front of this post that I like Lencioni. His common sense approach and simple style make his coaching accessible to those of us who have yet to earn that M.B.A. Church leaders can benefit from The Advantage. His emphasis on communication within the framework of an organization is worth the price of the book.

Those of you who know me are aware that I am an avid reader. I try to read broadly across many subjects including those that inform my work in pastoral ministry. At any given time I’ll have two to four books going in addition to the materials I read for sermon preparation. As my wife would say to her kindergarten class, “Books are our friends,” and in my experience, the authors of those books become counselors who challenge my thinking and provide wisdom for decisions that I face.

The most influential book I read last year (2011) is a book by Edwin Friedman titled Failure of Nerve. This book came to me at a particular time when I was facing some significant decisions. His work, published posthumously, continues to speak to me in 2012. Among the leadership lessons I learned from Friedman, I cite the following as most helpful:

1. Those who wish to disrupt leadership will always frame the problem in terms of liberty and order, while those in leadership will always see the problem as one of order and chaos.
2. Sabotage comes with the territory of leadership.
3. A society cannot evolve, no matter how much freedom is guaranteed, when the citizenry is more focused on one another than on their own beliefs and values.
4. Consensus will always be sought by those who value “we” over what is “right.”
5. Just because the page is torn off the calendar does not mean that unit of time has ceased to exist.
6. It’s always easier to be the least functional person in a high functioning society than to be a high functioning person in a dysfunctional society.
7. Well differentiated leadership (charting one’s own way by means of one’s own internal guidance system rather than perpetually eyeing the “scope” to see where others are at) is the solution to chronically anxious relationship systems.

These seven take-aways are a brief sampling of the content of the book. If you find any number of them compelling, the text as a whole will fill in any gaps or provide further detail. If you’re a leader of an organization, group, club, or team of any size or shape, I’d recommend Friedman’s book. His wisdom and insights will give you the perspective your need to make.