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Incentive Interview: Lencioni's Strength of a Story
January 27, 2009
Patrick Lencioni uses the particulars of a "fable" to impart universal truths about leadership
By Alex Palmer
Patrick Lencioni doesn't write business strategy books. It's true that his eight books, which have topped the New York Times best-seller list, do offer solutions to such problems as employee ennui, ineffective management and a lack of accountability in the workplace. But these solutions are offered to the reader in the form of "leadership fables"—fictional stories where the characters illustrate lessons in management and effectiveness.
"I think people learn better when they're engaged in a story," says Lencioni. "A lot of people who don't like to read business books, or get bogged down by them, will like a good story. I felt like I could actually better convey the message and help people understand how it works in the world by taking them through with a character who is dealing with it."
With a fast-moving story and page count well below 200, each book is meant to be breezed through in a single sitting and referred back to later. The approach seems to be working. Since founding consulting firm The Table Group in 1997, Lencioni has become highly in-demand as a speaker and consultant. And in November, Fortune named Lencioni "One of the 10 New Gurus You Should Know."
 Learning from Experience
Lencioni says he gets his story ideas through his consulting, conducting "field research" as he works with his clients and refining his ideas as he helps them get through issues they are struggling with. Before founding The Table Group, Lencioni worked at Bain & Company, Oracle Corporation and Sybase, where he was vice president of organizational development. But while he enjoyed his work at these companies, he describes feeling a desire to take the principles he had learned or was developing and apply them to other teams and a wider range of work environments.
His work as the head of The Table Group has done just that, and to date Lencioni has worked with thousands of clients from many industries, including Southwest Airlines, General Mills, Rubbermaid, New York Life and even the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Lencioni's expansive experience has allowed him to write to a broad audience, offering "universal truths" with wide application.
His book, The Three Signs of a Miserable Job, demonstrates this universality through the story of a retired CEO of a major exercise equipment company who is inspired to take over the management of a local, miserably run pizza place. What he finds is that employees at all levels in companies of any size become disengaged as a result of the same three factors (see sidebar). As the CEO applies these ideas and begins turning the restaurant around, Lencioni hopes the reader will see his or her own organization in the story, however unlike a pizzeria it may be.
Lencioni also intends his stories for an audience at all levels of organizations, from the CEO to the middle manager to the frustrated employee on the bottom rung of the ladder.
"When it comes to managing people for fulfillment and engagement, the principles are universal," says Lencioni. "People who have 'non-sexy' jobs deserve to be as fulfilled and feel as motivated as people who have jobs that are much more high-profile. And the other thing is that many people who are in high-profile jobs that are highly paid are actually miserable for the same reasons as the guy working at the front counter."
Ideas for Life as Well as Work
Just as these principles are meant to apply to organizations ranging from a major telecom company to a small church, Lencioni believes that management principles are as valid outside the workplace as they are in the office. The father of four boys, he recalls coming home one night and joking with his wife that if his clients ran their organizations the way he and his wife ran the family, the clients would go out of business.
"I help CEOs run their businesses more proactively, and I run my consulting firm proactively, and I had meetings and planning sessions and a strategy and values in place, but then I'd come home and I'd just wing it," says Lencioni. After speaking with other professionals, he found many others who put family at the top of their priorities, but failed to manage it with the same kind of planning and conscious strategizing that they put into their work.
The result of these lessons is Lencioni's most recent book, The 3 Big Questions for a Frantic Family. He says that while the book is about a different area of people's lives, he has found that the same audience that reads his business books have been interested in this story.
Editor's Note: In The Three Signs of a Miserable Job, Patrick Lencioni discusses the major demotivators that hurt morale and corrode a company's productivity. Here he discusses each sign and what kind of motivators can turn it around. Read "Motivating Away Misery" on Incentivemag.com.
Send comments to alex.palmer@incentivemag.com.
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