The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive: The Four Disciplines at the Heart of Making Any Organization World Class

The first three-quarters of this book consists of a fictional account of a technology consulting company run by CEO Rich O'Connor. O'Connor runs his company according to four disciplines which together powerfully maintain the health of the organization's culture. The four disciplines are: Build and Maintain a Cohesive Leadership Team; Create Organizational Clarity; Over-Communicate Organizational Clarity; and Reinforce Organizational Clarity Through Human Systems. While none of this will appear astoundingly new, the message is important and often not implemented. The fictional portrayal is followed by a more detailed analysis of the four disciplines. Most readers will find this a quick and enjoyable read that should ignite productive thinking about healthy organizations. Without a sound corporate culture even the smartest strategies and business models will not work optimally. Definitely worth reading.

Patrick Lencioni writes stories. Lots of them.He calls them `fables'. `Leadership fables', to be precise. It's a growing genre in business publications, perhaps a sign that such writers and their editors and marketers have caught on to the power of narrative to make a point that often comes across as dry and abstract when it's treated, well, dryly and abstractly.Lencioni is not a great story writer. He's just effective, which is probably satisfactory enough reward for this management consultant and, now, best-selling author (see The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, The Five Temptations of a CEO, and the hilariously betitled Death by Meeting).His secret is to keep it simple. There's not a lot of business theory here, but years of acute observation of leaders and the businesses they lead undergird the simple plot line of two executives of Bay Area firms, one who stumbles upon simplicity and another who just stumbles. Lencioni's villains are a little too simple-minded for my tastes, his hero a bit too moral. But that's only a critique if his intention is to write great literature. It's not: he wants to help execs who become too harried for our own good and anybody else's because we allow our task to complicate our work and, inevitably, our lives.I won't give away what the author's four obsessions are. But they're not rocket science. The author would be the first to tell you so.Most of us need some simplicity. And a little bit of obsession. You'll find them both here.

There is something special about hearing a story, whether it is around a campfire, a corporate boardroom, or in a book on leadership. It has a way of drawing in the reader and springing a surprise on them when their guard is down. We find ourselves more open, perhaps more honest, when we collectively share in a story that is definitely not about ourselves.Lencioni delivers a "leadership fable" in such a way as to sneak past our defenses and impart some important values: clear consistent communication, a leadership team which is candid but caring, and not taking the simple things for granted. We have heard these things dozens of times, yet "Four Obsessions" delivers these lessons in a way which hits home.The most important things tend to be the simple things: integrity, honesty, trust, transparency and love. The author never states it, but I believe that love is the underlying power that distinguishes and characterizes the truly remarkable company from the merely mediocre."Four Obsessions" is a quick read but the moral of the fable lingers long after the candle is blown out.

Love this book. We are actually having our whole executive team read it would highly recommend it to any organization striving for excellence

Really appreciate the storytelling approach to add context to the principles. Reinforces where I should be spending my time.