A Review of Patrick Lencioni’s SHRM Keynote Address

A Review of Patrick Lencioni’s SHRM Keynote Address
By Guest Blogger Kevin O’Brien



In the interest of full disclosure I am a CPP employee, though for less than a year, so while I may have sipped the Kool-Aid I have yet to crash through a brick wall and filled up everyone’s cup with MBTI. Additionally, I am new to the LD / OD world so this was my first HR slanted keynote. I came to CPP from the high tech sector, so for me Patrick’s speech was infinitely more exciting than the one’s I’ve heard on Service Oriented Architectures.

So, let’s get down to it. Patrick opened stating he was an ENFP and joked about the ENFP prayer, “Dear Lord, I pray… Oh look! A bird!” To my surprise that joke garnered a larger chuckle than I would have imagined. In fact, the mere mention of Myers-Briggs elicited most heads around me to nod, save the guy next to me engrossed in his laptop. I know Patrick references the MBTI in his books, but I was pleased to see most of the capacity crowd understand what the MBTI is, not just something they heard about.

The main focus of Patrick’s ~ 45 minute speech was on his newest book, The Three Signs of a Miserable Job: Anonymity / Knowing Your Employees; Irrelevance / A Greater Sense of Purpose; Inmeasurement / Not Knowing if One is Doing a Good Job. Much like his writing style he discussed these topics in story form. However, unlike the fables that he tells in his books, he used his personal experiences as references. Patrick once had the prestigious job of setting up targets at a shooting range in the desert. He would have a matter of minutes to jump back into his trench before bullets whizzed over head. I think his autobiographical story telling came across very well and by the end of his speech I felt like actually knew him- or at least where he’s coming from.

As Patrick explained, the 3 signs are pretty much no brainers, but it is the constant application of them that is the hard part. Did I learn anything that I didn’t already know? Conceptually, no. However, I was pleased I went to his lecture because while the concepts he talked about were not particularly rocket or computer science for that matter, they are deeply important to the well being of anyone who gets up in the morning. Also, I felt particularly proud to be wearing my big lettered MBTI shirt as he talked about Type. OK, time for a Kool-Aid brake!