The Advantage by Patrick Lencioni

This book is focused on building a solid, healthy leadership team. It explains why organizational health is more important than anything else in business. Having short-term and long-term goals, great communication, accountability and simply a "cohesive leadership team" built on mutual respect and trust, are key elements. Easier said than done, right? Right. This book lays out how to accomplish the above.

Organizational health is built using the Four Disciplines Model. 1) Build a cohesive team; 2) Create clarity; 3) Overcommunicate clarity; 4) Reinforce clarity.

1) Build a Cohesive Team. A leadership team is a small group of people who are collectively responsible for achieving a common objective for their organization. (Pg 21) There are five behavioral principles that leadership teams must embrace: Trust, Conflict, Commitment, Accountability and Results.

Trust is a difficult thing to accomplish. I live this difficulty. It has to be a vulnerability-based trust, which means everyone has to be 100% comfortable being transparent. There has to be a willingness to sacrifice for the good of the team.

Conflict. When there is trust, conflict becomes nothing but the pursuit of truth, an attempt to find the best possible answer. (Pg 38) There has to be a willingness to disagree around important issues and decisions that must be made. One way to raise the level of healthy conflict at a team meeting is for the leader to mine for conflict. The leader must demand that people speak up when he/she senses disagreement.

Commitment. People will not actively commit to a decision if they have not been given the opportunity to provide input and if they don't understand the reasoning behind the decision. At the end of each meeting, decisions must be clarified and understood by each team member before leaving.

Accountability. Peer-to-peer accountability is the primary and most effective source of accountability on a leadership team. (Pg 54) When team members know that their colleagues are truly committed to something, they can confront each other about issues without fearing defensiveness or backlash.

Results. The leadership team must have a greater affinity to and loyalty to the team they are collectively serving instead of their individual departments. If the organization rarely achieves its goals, then it simply doesn't have a good leadership team.

2) Create Clarity. There has to be so much clarity that there is no room for confusion, disorder and infighting. Lencioni says to skip the "mission statement". Instead, the leadership team must answer six critical 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? He suggests using a Playbook template to outline the thematic goal and objectives.

3) Overcommunicate Clarity. There is a great need for repetition. Effective communication requires that important messages come from different sources and through various channels, using a variety of tools.  The leadership team needs to come up with a clear message, and then take the message immediately back to their direct reports, who then take it to their own direct reports. This is called "cascading communication". Top-Down Communication is the most common direction that key information travels in an organization.

4) Reinforce Clarity. The six critical questions must be embedded in the fabric of the organization. Every process within an organization involving people should be designed to reinforce the answers to the six questions. Human systems give an organization a structure of tying its operations, culture, and management together, even when leaders aren't around to remind people. (Pg 155)

Finally, the one thing that is central to reaching, maintaining and sustaining organizational health is meeting on a regular basis. There are four types of meetings: 1) The Daily Check-In/Administrative (5-10 minutes); 2) Weekly  Staff Meeting/Tactical (45-90 minutes); Adhoc Topical/Strategic (2-4 hours); 4) Quarterly Off-Site Review/Developmental (1-2 days). [A] great deal of the time that leaders spend every day is a result of having to address issues that come about because they aren't being resolved during meetings in the first place. (Pg 186)

Wendy's Rating: ****

The Five-Star Weekend by Elin Hilderbrand

It's always good to read "beach books" in the summer. Elin Hilderbrand books are always a fast and entertaining read, and this one is no exception to that. She does a nice job of describing and developing her characters.

The main character of the story is Hollis Shaw. From the outside, she has a cushy life. She is married to a doctor and her food blog has become a hit, so they are not hurting for money! She and her husband built her "dream home" on Hollis' family land on Nantucket, which is where she spends her summers. (Her husband, Matthew, works during the week and then goes to Nantucket on the weekends.) They have one daughter, Caroline, who is a young adult and a "daddy's girl".

Matthew dies unexpectantly in a car accident, which sends Hollis & Caroline into different tail spins - moving away from each other. This story really picks up about six months after Matthew's death. Hollis, after grieving for six months - and being estranged from Caroline during that whole time - decides to have a "Five-Star Weekend", an idea she gets from an article that she read. She invites women (4) from different parts of her life to gather for a weekend at her home on Nantucket. She also invites Caroline to film the weekend. (Caroline is a budding "filmographer". I'm not sure that's an actual word, but I can't think of a better one right now!)

Some of the women know each other, some don't. Some like each other. Others don't. One woman, Gigi, is a stranger to all. So, an interesting group to throw together for an entire weekend. As the weekend unfolds, we get to know each woman and their background stories. We get to know their strengths and their insecurities. We get to see why they have made the decisions they have in their lives - and how it's affected each of them. One thing I love about this story is Caroline discovering who her mother is as a person, and not just as a mother. As Caroline interviews each of the women separately about their experiences with Hollis during the different times of her life, she develops an understanding of who her mother actually is. It really strengthens their relationship tenfold.

This is a story about friendship and forgiveness - and love. What's not to like?

Wendy's Rating: ****

Jelly's Gold by David Housewright

This book is the 6th book in the Rushmore McKenzie series - and the first that I have read. McKenzie is independently wealthy but spends his time solving mysteries (very similar to the Charles Finch series about amateur detective Charles Lenox!) The story of Jelly's Gold starts back in 1933. Back in the 1930s, St. Paul, Minnesota was the sheltered home for many gangsters and other corrupt people, including the "upper crust" of society and the police force. There was an understanding that as long as no crime was committed in St. Paul, the St. Paul police force and others in authority would turn a blind eye to crimes committed outside the city of St. Paul. So, St. Paul was a gangster "safe haven".

This is the story of Frank "Jelly" Nash who steals cash and gold bars from a bank in 1933 and then stashes the gold bars in an unknown location. The gold was never found. (By the way, Frank Nash was a real person, but he didn't commit this particular bank robbery. He had an alibi.) Anyway, McKenzie is made aware of this undiscovered gold and asked to help find it. McKenzie finds out promptly that there are several people who are trying to find the gold (worth $8,000,000 now). It's difficult to know who to trust and who to work with (for McKenzie and the reader!) McKenzie cuts lots of "deals" trying to get information and track down the details of what Nash and his fellow criminal friends were doing in the 1930s.

Since I live in Minnesota, the history of St. Paul, and the criminals that sheltered there, was fascinating. I didn't actually know that St. Paul was so corrupt back then. Housewright describes the lifestyles and crimes of a lot of well-know gangsters, like John Dillinger and and Baby Face Nelson. While researching what everyone was doing in 1933 - where they lived, who they associated with, etc. - McKenzie was being followed by people, warned off, asked to partner-up with various people. All of this, and no one really even knew if the gold bar stash still existed. I certainly didn't know myself how it would all end!

I won't spoil the end, but it was an entertaining read. Housewright has a writing style that I am not 100% fond of, but to each their own I guess. (He uses an inner voice in addition to dialogue between people.)

Wendy's Rating: ****

Neverseen (Keeper of the Lost Cities #4) by Shannon Messenger

I continue to be engaged by this series. This is only Book 4 - and apparently there will be 10. I honestly can't imagine where it's all going to end up. The author has an incredible imagination and a fluid writing style, so even though the books are close to 700 pages long, it reads quickly. (At least for an adult.)

The Neverseen are the enemies of the elves, and pretty much every other creature other than the ogres. They are a secret organization with some shocking members. We found out in Book 3 that Keefe's mother was a leader in the Neverseen. She is "off the grid" in Book 4, although Keefe spends a lot of time and emotional energy trying to figure out if she is still alive or held captive. There is another surprise "reveal" of a Neverseen member in this story, but I won't ruin it for anyone reading this first. We also find out who some key members of the Black Swan are - finally. There are so many disguises, it's hard to keep track at times.

In this book, Sophie, Dex, Biana, Keefe and Fitz are banished to Exillium, which was way different than I thought it would be. I thought it would be like a punishment, especially after the kids were told that there is no interaction between students at the school. They were also told that they had to earn a token in order to return the next day. The kids' experience there - and the training they received - were actually beneficial to them once they left. Plus, Sophie was able to make some positive changes to the school, which had pretty much been "abandoned" by the Council.

Since Sophie and friends are banished from their homes & school (Foxfire), they are taken to live with the gnomes in two tree houses. The gnome that helps them most is Calla. A plague struck a gnome colony and no one understands what was causing the plague or how to cure it. Calla wants to save the gnomes who are ill - and prevent the plague from spreading. So there is a "Collective" which works together to try to figure out what's going on and who is engineering it all. They suspect the Neverseen of course, with help from the ogres.

Since the kids are considered fugitives, all of their actions are done on the sly - with the help of the gnomes & some of the Council members. While at Exillium, they met Tam and his twin sister, Linh. Tam is a Shade (meaning he can shade himself & others in shadow so they can move around unseen) and Linh is a Hydrokinetic (meaning she can move water). These two join the others in their attempt to steal the "cure" for the plague from King Dimitar, the king of the ogres.

It's really difficult to summarize everything that happens in these books because the storyline is complex. A lot happens for a lot of different reasons. I highly recommend this entertaining series!

Wendy's Rating: *****