Quote
“Not finance. Not strategy. Not technology. It is teamwork that remains the ultimate competitive advantage, both because it is so powerful and so rare.”— Patrick Lencioni, in The Five Dysfunctions of a Team (2002) · The Five Dysfunctions of a Team →
Why it was said
Patrick Lencioni opens The Five Dysfunctions of a Team with this claim before the fable about a technology company's executive team. The five dysfunctions, absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability, inattention to results, are what make it rare.
What it actually means
Strategy and money can be copied or bought; a team whose members trust each other enough to argue, commit and hold each other to account cannot. Lencioni's sentence has a second half people forget: the advantage exists because teamwork is rare, and it is rare because the first dysfunction, the absence of trust, is uncomfortable to fix. The book's pyramid starts there because every other layer sits on it.
How to use it
- 1Rate your team on the five dysfunctions honestly, starting with whether people admit mistakes in front of each other.
- 2Fix trust before process: one real vulnerability shared by the leader does more than a new meeting format.