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Effective teamwork isn’t just nice to have, it’s essential for survival in today’s competitive business landscape. Many organizations continue to struggle with team dynamics that undermine their performance and results despite countless team-building exercises and leadership initiatives.

Patrick Lencioni’s bestselling book, “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team,” offers a powerful framework for understanding why teams fail and what leaders can do about it. After working with hundreds of executive teams, Lencioni identified five interconnected behaviors that sabotage team effectiveness, which he presents in a simple but profound pyramid model. Here is a quote from Lencioni:

“If you could get all the people in an organization rowing in the same direction,
you could dominate any industry, in any market, against any competitor, at any time.”

The Pyramid of Dysfunction

Absence of Trust: When team members are unwilling to be vulnerable with one another, they create an environment of invulnerability where genuine connection is impossible. This isn’t just about trusting others won’t betray you; it’s not about the trust of relying on someone’s ability to deliver. It’s about the confidence to admit mistakes, weaknesses, and needs for help.

Building on this shaky foundation comes Fear of Conflict. Teams lacking trust avoid engaging in unfiltered, passionate debate about ideas. Instead, they maintain an artificial harmony that may feel comfortable but prevents the productive conflict necessary for growth and innovation.

The third dysfunction is Lack of Commitment. Without having aired their opinions in honest debate, team members rarely buy in and commit to decisions, even when they pretend to agree during meetings. This creates awkward silence moments in meetings. Such ambiguity about direction and priorities is devastating to organizational effectiveness.

Fourth comes Avoidance of Accountability. Without commitment, team members hesitate to call out peers on actions and behaviors that might hurt the team. They do not keep each other accountable as there is no certainty about commitments based on constructive conflicts and trust. This leads to low standards as the team accepts mediocre performance.

At the top of the pyramid sits Inattention to Results. This is the final blow for the success. Building blocks of the dysfunctions create an environment where individual needs (ego, career development, recognition) are measured as success criteria above collective goals. Team fails and the focus shifts from collective outcomes to personal status.I have seen signs of team dysfunctions everywhere

Examples of Dysfunctions

Let’s get a little deeper into each dysfunction separately and how they are likely to manifest in organizations.

Have you noticed yourself talking more about what others want to hear, more than what you want to tell? You may observe others doing the same. This is called politics. When people do not trust each other about their own vulnerabilities, they protect themselves by hiding what they think and ‘mind their own business’.

When was the last time when your team was silent in a meeting? I am not talking about a meeting of presentations, but rather a meeting where things need to be discussed and agreed. If people are silent and pretend to agree what you are proposing, this artificial harmony is a sign of fear of conflict, which in this framework is built on top of absence of trust.

Are you able to tell when the deadlines are in your team? If not, and if you have been to the silent meetings recently without any productive discussion over what to achieve, such ambiguity is a sign of lack of commitment dysfunction.

Do you know if you are, or others in your team are accountable for delivering the results? Have you warned a team mate for the low standards they have been fine with? Do you think calling others out in your team for inadequate output is bad? If that is the case, re-evaluate the health of your team and how you trust each other about getting better results as a team.

Do you care about if your team delivers? Do you care more about the results of your team, or more about completing the part you are assigned to? If you think that you can succeed while others in your team fail, you are on the top of the pyramid with the inattention to results.

Critics

This is an excellent framework to identify and improve how we work in modern organizations. However, its applicability in the wide range of cultures all around the world is a question mark. Considering the facts around different cultures, especially the ones with high Power Distance Index (see. Hofstede Cultural Dimensions), this framework’s applicability may diminish.

In cultures where hierarchy is deeply respected and challenging authority is discouraged, vulnerability based trust and productive conflict may be harder to implement. Junior team members in such cultures might feel uncomfortable expressing disagreement with their managers, even when encouraged to do so. Similarly, in collectivist cultures, the emphasis on group harmony might make direct accountability conversations particularly challenging.

Another criticism is that Lencioni’s model focuses primarily on internal team dynamics but gives less attention to external factors. Organizational structures, resource constraints, competing priorities from multiple stakeholders, and market pressure can all impact team effectiveness in ways that aren’t fully captured by the five dysfunctions.

Practical Applications

Despite these critiques, the five dysfunctions model offers valuable insights for leaders across industries. The key is adapting the principles to fit your specific organizational culture and context.

For example, in high power distance cultures, leaders might need to create more structured processes for getting feedback and encouraging debate. In fast-paced environments with tight deadlines, abbreviated versions of commitment and accountability discussions might be necessary.

What matters most is recognizing that dysfunctional team behaviors are often interconnected. Addressing surface-level symptoms without tackling the underlying trust issues rarely leads to lasting improvement. By starting with building vulnerability-based trust and working systematically through each dysfunction, teams can develop greater cohesion and ultimately deliver better results.

My Personal Experience

Building effective teams is hard. Agile software development requires high level of adaptability and if your teams are working on complex products with varying deadlines, it gets harder to identify the reasons behind the inefficiencies. My personal experience has been such that teams are more effective when the expectations are clearer. However, Lencioni’s book gave me a new perspective about how we could transform the way teams could perform. Observing the dysfunctions all around in my professional and personal life has definitely been an eye opening way of seeing the potential improvements.

Leadership roles in the various business contexts require a core understanding of the environment, systematic approach to solve the problems and seeing the bigger picture within and around the organization. Richard Rumelt’s “Good Strategy / Bad Strategy” is an excellent book that uncovers the mysteries of the true nature of a strategy. We will delve into the core principles presented in the book and explore how they can be applied in this short blog post.

Understanding the Core of Good Strategy

Clarity of Thought and Vision

Rumelt emphasizes that at the heart of a good strategy is a clear diagnosis of the situation, understanding of the challenge, and a coherent approach to overcome it. This clarity cuts through the noise and complexity, enabling leaders to focus on what is truly important. There are also examples in the book which the managers build their strategies by either not understanding the real problems in an organization or ignoring them. We all remember the story of Don Quixote, right? This is in reality, sweeping the problems under the carpet and add new ones. Unsolved problems come up with different shapes and causes companies to fail inside out. The proper first step is to acknowledge and prioritize what to address, then overcoming the challenge becomes possible.

Leveraging Strengths

A strategic approach is not just about addressing challenges but also about leveraging strengths. Rumelt argues that a good strategy plays to an organization’s strengths, turning what you have into a powerful tool to edge past competition. It is a fundamental requirement to understand what your organization’s foundational and learned strengths before touching the pen to start working on a strategy. Remember, strengths could be vastly different depending on the environment, industry or even the different life phases of the key people in your organization. In some cases, properties of the organization could manifest themselves as strength at a certain time while the very same so called strength could turn into a fatal weakness.

Pragmatism Over Fantasy

Rumelt warns against what he terms ‘bad strategy,’ which often includes lofty goals without realistic plans. There are public examples of management in giant companies which create strategies from their ivory towers and everyone except them struggle to see how the strategy could be achieved or how a plan could be created out of the stragey. A good strategy is grounded in realistic assessments and actionable steps, steering clear of fanciful objectives disconnected from ground realities. If a strategical objective cannot be put into a plan, then it probably is not good to have under a strategy.

Key Takeaways from the Book

The Kernel of Strategy

At its core, strategy involves three elements: a diagnosis, a guiding policy, and coherent actions. This ‘kernel’ is the foundation which effective strategies are built on top of.

The Pitfalls of Bad Strategy

Bad strategies, according to Rumelt, often arise from unrealistic or misguided objectives, lack of focus, or mere fuzz that lacks substance. Recognizing these pitfalls is the first step in avoiding them.

Strategy is Dynamic

The book also highlights that strategy is not a one time event but it is actually a compass while navigating the rough waters. Whoever owning the strategy must keep it up to date and ensure the adaptation to changing circumstances and opportunities.

Applying the Concepts

In Business Leadership

Leaders can utilize Rumelt’s principles by being open about their organization’s challenges, setting achievable objectives, and aligning actions with these goals. This approach fosters a culture of focused and effective strategy execution. Remember, a strategy is effective if it could be understood and worked towards to. With this type of methodology, it is easier to get commitment from the members of the organization towards the most important goals.

Personal Career

Individuals can apply these insights in their career planning. By clearly understanding personal strengths and the challenges of the job market, one can formulate a strategy for career advancement that is both realistic and ambitious. Creation of such strategy would guide an individual for identifying the challenges and enable long term career planning.

In Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurs can benefit from these principles by focusing on their unique value proposition, understanding their market deeply, and crafting strategies that leverage their strengths to outmaneuver potential or existing competition.

Conclusion

“Good Strategy / Bad Strategy” is not just a book; it’s a lens through which to view business and personal challenges. Rumelt’s wisdom encourages us to embrace clarity, leverage our strengths, and approach strategy with a balance of ambition and pragmatism. As we apply these timeless principles, we pave the way for success in our organizations and personal endeavors. I strongly recommend this book to people who are in need of guidance within business or personal context.

It has been more than a month since my first post about the graphs showing the COVID19 city snapshots from THL website. During that time, THL has improved and now they show the region by region infection density according to the data published last 14 days. 149 new infections diagnosed yesterday in Finland and I wanted to give an update on the 3 week moving sum city graphs. Note that the graphs below are only the snapshots taken from THL. Also the cities below are picked due to the size/growth rate of the infection and there are also other cities with #COVID19 infections. For most accurate information, please visit THL official website and daily update pages.

As a short summary, infection rates in Jyväskylä, Mikkeli and Lahti are rising among some other smaller cities which is different than what we have seen in the first wave. Situation in Uusimaa also not also getting better. There are small number of cities where the trend is downwards including Turku and Kuhmo.

It has been a while since the last time I wrote a post but here is a new one. It is about cycling. I have been cycling on my free time last few years and I enjoy it quite a lot. This is something I could not have done back in Istanbul due to traffic safety reasons but in Finland, you could enjoy your ride in almost all parts of the country. I owned a road bike around for around two years before it was stolen last November and only now I got a new one.

As I have been enjoying cycling in Helsinki, I decided to make a short video out of my one of the first short spring trips in May 2020. It was only an hour long trip and it started like a summer day and ended like a proper Finnish spring. It is also visible that people prefer to be outside despite to Coronavirus pandemic. I have little video editing experience so do not expect too much 🙂

I am thinking of starting a VLOG but cannot decide what the content should be. One option is to share my experiences and thoughts about cycling to fellow beginner cyclists, another option is to share my experience as a professional living in Finland. I had this idea for a few years already, but maybe social isolation of Coronavirus could have a positive output. Feel free to contact me if you think of something interesting.

Software is designed and implemented to solve problems. While some problems are more complex than others, every problem requires certain breaking down and simplification. This is called divide and conquer. Latin version is “divide et impera” and this has been one of the most successful politics strategy among our short history of politics. Although the history of software is even shorter and not comparable to politics, the necessity of divide and conquer strategy is vital. A software engineer or architect needs to divide a problem into smaller pieces to understand it better and to come up a comprehensive solution. In this post, you will be reading about the ways to break down a big problem into more manageable pieces and we will be discussing which way is better.

Functional Decomposition

Functional decomposition is the traditional way to break-down a complex problem into smaller pieces. Most of the time, it is the most evident and obvious solution to a given problem. To achieve functional decomposition, object oriented programming (or sometimes other paradigms as well) influences the problem solver to construct the smaller pieces. I would like to concentrate on the mental model of the programmer in decomposing the problem and let’s consider an object oriented programming language is used. Object oriented programming will allow the programmer to make abstractions of the bigger problem into smaller functional pieces. Functional decomposition is the first solution which comes to mind when designing software. I think this is because people who are coding using OOP languages are inclined to design their systems with functional decomposition because of the way OOP is taught to them. Also almost always there is an obvious break-down of the problem using this decomposition method.

Is that right thing to do?

Absolutely not, from the software architecture point of view. Functional decomposition leads the complex problem to be broken down to smaller functional problems which are isolated from each other in the wrong way. Solutions to small functional problems force coder to implement incorrect encapsulation which prevents reuse between different sub-solutions and make solution to small problem also over complicated. Joe Armstrong criticize Object Oriented Programming “The problem with object-oriented languages is they’ve got all this implicit environment that they carry around with them. You wanted a banana but what you got was a gorilla holding the banana and the entire jungle.”

Object Oriented Programming is a powerful tool, but relying only on it when decomposing software is not the right approach.

Volatility Based Decomposition

I heard this type of decomposition at a conference from Juval Löwy. Decomposing by volatility means that system should be designed via separate modules with different volatility levels. Those modules should be isolated from each other and changing one of them should not affect the other modules. It is in a way close to composition design pattern. Breaking down a big problem into smaller pieces is not that easy when the solution is not as evident as in functional decomposition.

Rules:
– Identify change areas and isolate similar change areas from others.
– Do not use functional change as a change area.
– Integrate features onto the architecture (features are not implementation)
– Do not resonate with change

Where does object oriented paradigm stand in this decomposition as a tool? Volatility based decomposition takes advantage of powerful encapsulation mechanisms. Interfaces and classes should be designed to isolate the implemented change area/module from other modules. Features emerge on top of the different volatility levels. Functions or features are most of the time at the highest volatility level and changing features should not break the architecture.

Credits

This blog post was inspired by Juval Löwy at Zen of Architecture session presented in Software Design and Development Conference 2019, London.