I struggled to decide which of the two books I’d recently read should be shared as my ‘last’ book of the 2022-2023 school year. I came down on the side of Silos, Politics and Turf Wars, by the management consultant Patrick Lencionni, and I’ll explain why below. I’ve written about Lencionni’s books before, which I love for their simple and clear frameworks and messaging. He writes most of his books in the form of a parable (so they read incredibly quickly), with a concluding chapter that summarizes his ideas explicitly and in a practical format.
Ironically, this is one book where I don’t think the title quite does justice to the goal of the book (though getting rid of silos and politics is certainly an outcome). When thinking about the goals of a leadership team, Lencionni puts vision and mission, which are abstract and blue-sky on one end of a spectrum, and tactics on the other. What he thinks is missing is clarity about what’s in the middle. The three categories he identifies are thematic goals, defining objectives, and standard operating objectives. A thematic goal is one level down from vision, and is defined as a time-limited focus of the entire leadership team, and addresses an important action step that articulates a desired accomplishment. It is not specific and measurable, but a juicy direction the entire leadership team can buy into, and is vitally important for the organization. The actionable steps of the thematic goal are its defining objectives. And finally, the standard operating objectives are the day to day things a person in leadership must do, regardless of the circumstances, and can’t be forgotten along the way. When an organization has this kind of clarity, silos and politics will fall to the wayside.
Over the last year and a half our lay and professional leadership has engaged in a strategic planning process where we developed our new mission and vision, a set of objectives and key results (the overview of which you received in the mail recently, along with a much more specific set of goals the leadership team and board have developed to track our progress), and the soon-to-be-finished Portrait of a Graduate. This fruits of this community-wide labour has led to beautiful fruit in the form of new school initiatives for the coming year, like: a community building committee tasked with bringing us all closer together; more time for teachers to meet, plan and learn to better support and guide our students; a new onboarding and mentoring program for new employees, and so much more. Our clarity of direction, both strategic and practical, is exceptionally exciting, and is why I’m so excited for the 2023-2024 school year! This all happened because of the clarity we developed through the strategic planning process, and the kind of activities that Lencionni describes in his book. For this reason his book rang true with me, and why it seemed such a great book to review at the year’s end.
I want to wish everyone a very happy and relaxing summer, and the discovery of many wonderful books!
Just Because I Liked It:
- Please listen to this wonderful overview about the great talmudic and halachic chachamim of Muslim Spain (the two hundred years or so that preceded and ended with the Rambam) with Professor Marc Herman of York University (and a Netivot parent!).
- I found this interview with Chobani yogurt founder, Hamdi Ulukaya, totally charming and fascinating. He has an amazing life story, and a powerful message about responsibility and entrepreneurship.