Dysfunction 5: Inattention to Results

Lesson 7: Dysfunction 5 — Inattention to Results

The apex of the pyramid. A truly functional team is obsessed with one thing: collective results — the team's goals, the company's outcomes, the score of the game. A dysfunctional team is obsessed with something else: individual success, status, ego, and recognition. When those two obsessions collide, the individuals win — and the team loses.

What it looks like in practice

• Executives talk about "my department," "my numbers," "my team" — and treat their function's success as more important than the company's.
• Recognition-seeking: taking credit, building personal brands, positioning for the next job.
• Silo warfare: departments hoard resources and information instead of sharing them.
• Team goals are vague or absent; individual goals are precise and loudly tracked.
• The team's stated mission is real, but the behavior says otherwise — career advancement is the actual operating system.

Lencioni's sharpest illustration is in the fable: Kathryn's husband, a basketball coach, benches one of his best players — a prolific scorer — because the player cares more about his own points than about whether the team wins. Individual brilliance that doesn't serve the team's result isn't brilliance; it's a leak in the boat.

What counts as a "result"?

Lencioni is specific: results are the team's collective outcomes — revenue, customer wins, product launches, the one or two metrics that define the team's mission. They are:

• Clearly defined. "Become the leading provider in our market" is a slogan, not a goal. "Acquire 18 new customers this year" is a goal — public, measurable, and checkable.
• Measurable. You can only be accountable to a number or a milestone you can actually check.
• Team-level. The goal belongs to the team, not to any individual's quota. If it can be hit by one star while the team drifts, it's the wrong goal.

Related idea — the first team: for executives, their first team is the executive team, not the department they manage. Every time an exec prioritizes their function over the leadership team's shared goals, they're feeding dysfunction 5. The "first team" concept is why this book is so popular with senior leadership — it names the exact moment where most companies lose: when the boss of Sales defends Sales against the company.

How it relates to the other dysfunctions

Inattention to results is the consequence of everything below it. Without accountability, standards collapse and individuals optimize for themselves. Without commitment, goals are fuzzy and people pursue their own interpretations. Without conflict and trust, nobody can even name the problem. That's why the pyramid is solved from the bottom: you cannot order a team to "focus on results" any more than you can order a house to ignore its missing foundation. Results are the output; the other four dysfunctions are the machine.

How to combat it

1. Public declaration of results. State the team's goals and expectations out loud, in writing, where everyone can see them — and connect each person's work to the collective goal. Public goals are harder to privately ignore.
2. Results-based team rewards. Tie compensation and recognition primarily to team outcomes. When the bonus pool is shared, "my numbers" stops being the operating system and "our numbers" starts.
3. Keep score. A visible scoreboard — the team's one or two key metrics, updated regularly and reviewed in every meeting. Teams play differently when the score is on the wall. (Kathryn's DecisionTech goal — 18 new deals — was a scoreboard item: concrete, public, and reviewed relentlessly.)
4. Subjugate the ego — starting with the leader. The leader must model putting team results above personal credit: celebrating the team's wins, absorbing its losses, and never taking the credit that belongs to the collective. What the leader rewards signals what counts.

Further Reading

• Wikipedia: First team (leadership concept)
• The Table Group: Five Dysfunctions resources