Review: Patrick Lencioni – The Advantage (S)

The Advantage:
Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business
Patrick Lencioni

“There is a competitive advantage out there, arguably more powerful than any other. Is it superior strategy? Faster innovation? Smarter employees? No, New York Times best-selling author, Patrick Lencioni, argues that the seminal difference between successful companies and mediocre ones has little to do with what they know and how smart they are and more to do with how healthy they are.”

This book is a bit of a disappointment from this author. The way it comes across is as a kind of summary of his 5 other books. His other 5 books are fables and go into each item in more detail. The idea of this book was to put each thing in context, however I felt that was lost. He said at the start that you didn’t have to have read his 5 other books first before this one.

I had read 3/5 at the time so I continued reading. He ended up providing a summary of each as he went, whereas it could have been better if he said read the 5 books first before reading this one, because he repeated parts of those books.

It had some good take away things, as in 6 questions that you go away and answer about your business.
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, now?
6. Who must do what?

Overall, it’s just not as good as his other books at all. There are some good parts, but disappointingly it’s written in the normal business type style book not in a fable sense like his others. The start was good as I was hooked early on, but I felt it went down hill at the end (and felt a bit rushed, honestly). It’s not a re-read, or a buy (I borrowed it through Scribd), but I still want to read the rest of his books.