The Five Temptations of a CEO: A Leadership Fable

by Patrick Lencioni

How do you know when a writer speaks the truth? You can find yourself going, "yes, yes," recognizing that the author's points echo some hard-won conclusion you've come to over the years. Or you can find yourself going, "no, no," recognizing that the author has nailed some part of you that you would rather not think about, let alone be nailed for. High on my list of must-read "no, no" books is Patrick Lencioni's The Five Temptations of a CEO: A Leadership Fable (Jossey-Bass, 1998). It's a short book that provides insights and a basis for action--at least for those strong enough to offer themselves to Lencioni's hammer.

I'm going to come at Lencioni obliquely because his book is so short (130 pages) that I'm afraid any summary will trivialize his thesis. One of the things that makes The Five Temptations so powerful is the order and the way in which Lencioni presents the temptations. We learn and apply each of the temptations as the main character--a CEO who is facing poor firm performance--learns and applies them. I am not going to list those temptations; all I will say is that I am an owner of a firm and I have never met a CEO, President or senior executive who would not benefit from reading Lencioni.

Because I don't want to summarize Lencioni, I have to approach his book indirectly. What struck me as I read The Five Temptations is how similar Lencioni's thesis is to Chris Argyris' work--best examined in "Teaching Smart People How to Learn" (Harvard Business Review, May-June, 1991).

Argyris basically argues that smart people--executives, consultants, and engineers, as examples--are poor learners because they are trained to identify and solve problems; they are not trained to look at the impact that they themselves may be having on a given problem. As Argyris says, "... Most people define learning too narrowly as mere 'problem solving.' so they focus on identifying and correcting errors in the external environment. But if learning is to persist, managers and employees must also look inward. They need to reflect critically on their own behavior, identify the ways they often inadvertently contribute to the organization's problems, and then change how they act. In particular, they must learn how the very way they go about defining and solving problems can be a source of problems in its own right."

This is one of those paragraphs that it's easy to say "yes yes" to because it lacks the specificity that forces self-analysis (and its long sentences tend to induce drowsiness). As I read the article, I can think of many people that Argyris is describing and easily let myself off the hook. Lencioni, though, approaching the same issue in The Five Temptations, doesn't allow any easy finger pointing at others. The reader becomes the CEO facing firm performance which he describes as being "unspectacular at best." As the CEO works through how he has contributed to that poor performance, I think there are going to be very few businesspeople who will be able to avoid saying, "Oh my God, I've done that." And I am speaking from experience. I read the book twice hoping--and failing--to rationalize away some of Lencioni's points.

As I look over what I've said here, I make reading The Five Temptations sound a great deal like visiting an oral surgeon, which does it a disservice. While the book is one of the most powerful and real business books I have read in the last couple of years--and receives my highest recommendation--it is also fun to read. The laughter that it generates, though, is not of the "whoopee" variety; rather, Lencioni's humor is more rueful, focusing as it does on the difference between how we think we act and how we actually act in business situations. In that difference, Lencioni argues compellingly, is the basis for poor personal and organizational performance.

Is there any executive out there unwilling to invest ninety minutes in learning about him/herself and perhaps learning how to improve personal and organizational performance? If there is, that executive may already have fallen prey to Lencioni's Temptation One.

Reviewed by S4 Consulting

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