Inspired by Patrick Lencioni’s The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business

In The Advantage, Patrick Lencioni argues that organisational health can provide a significant competitive advantage. Beyond strategy, expertise and intelligence, healthy organisations are characterised by leadership alignment, clarity, consistency and an environment in which people understand what matters and how they are expected to contribute.

One aspect of this thinking resonates particularly strongly with Legitimate Leadership’s approach to Organisational Excellence: values only have meaning when they are reflected in behaviour.

Comment by Ian Munro, CEO, Legitimate Leadership. In our day-to-day working lives, our decisions are guided by our intent – are we here to give or to take?

Being here to take doesn’t require much thought or effort. For most of us, it’s the default. It’s what happens when our wants or needs are in the driving seat – and it’s particularly problematic when our needs conflict with others in our team or elsewhere in our organisation. Being guided by our needs, our “take”, is the antithesis of collaboration, and it is at the core of much of the organisational dysfunction we see around us – the poor organisational health described by Lencioni.

The alternative is to be driven by our values – and most powerfully when operating as a collective – by our shared values. Shared values underpin effective collaboration because they shape not only what matters to us, but also how we behave and how we distinguish our group from others. It is their inherent power that makes values so pervasive – businesses have values, schools have values, not-for-profits have values – but behaving in alignment with what we write on the wall and say in the boardroom is hard. It requires self-awareness, deliberate choice and practice.

When we get values right, we lay the foundation for excellence. When we get them wrong, we give our people yet another reason to stop taking us seriously as leaders.   

Our perspective on this resource: Patrick Lencioni’s The Advantage argues that organisational health can provide a significant competitive advantage. Beyond strategy, expertise and intelligence, healthy organisations are characterised by leadership alignment, clarity, consistency and an environment in which people understand what matters and how they are expected to contribute.

One aspect of this thinking resonates particularly strongly with Legitimate Leadership’s approach to Organisational Excellence: values only have meaning when they are reflected in behaviour.

Organisations can invest significant time defining their vision, mission and values. But the real test comes when those words leave the boardroom and meet the realities of everyday work.

At Legitimate Leadership, we see Vision, Mission and Values as an important part of creating an environment that enables people to contribute. Establishing the values is only the beginning. Those values must be translated into clear behaviours people can understand, observe, and live.

Leadership plays a particularly important role in making this real.

What leaders consistently demonstrate, prioritise, recognise, and address sends a powerful message about what the organisation genuinely stands for. Equally, when behaviour contradicts stated values and is repeatedly overlooked, the message can be stronger than anything written on a wall or communicated in a strategy document.

This connects to a much broader principle within Legitimate Leadership.

We measure organisational success by the extent to which people collectively GIVE more than they TAKE. Sustainable organisational excellence therefore requires an environment that enables and encourages contribution. Vision, values, structures, systems and leadership behaviour should ultimately support people in making that shift.

Culture cannot simply be declared. It develops through the choices and behaviours repeated across an organisation every day.

For leaders, the challenge is therefore not only to ask:

What are our values?”

but also,

“What behaviours demonstrate those values, and are we consistently enabling and reinforcing them?”

Our Takeaway

Organisational excellence is not achieved by having the right words on paper. It becomes evident when vision, mission, and values translate into the behaviours people experience every day.

When leaders model and reinforce those behaviours, they help create an environment in which people are increasingly willing and able to contribute. Ultimately, an organisation’s strength is reflected in the collective shift from TAKING to GIVING at work.

The Resource: The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business by Patrick Lencioni. Explore The Advantage

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If your organisation wants to strengthen the connection between its Vision, Mission, and Values and the behaviours demonstrated every day, Legitimate Leadership offers focused Organisational Excellence consulting engagements and workshops designed to help organisations embed values and critical behaviours that enable genuine contribution.

 Our Organisational Excellence work also extends to Enabling Structures and Systems, Dealing with Exceptions, and Cultivating Relationships, with solutions shaped around each organisation’s specific needs.

 To explore how Legitimate Leadership can support your organisation in creating an environment where people are increasingly willing and able to GIVE rather than TAKE, contact us at info@legitimateleadership.com, and a member of our team will be in touch.