Silos, Politics and Turf Wars: A Leadership Fable.

• Author: Marshall, Jeffrey
• Position: By Patrick Lencioni - Brief article - Book review

Silos, Politics and Turf Wars: A Leadership Fable. By Patrick Lencioni. Jossey-Bass, 211 pages. $29.95.

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This latest book from author Lencioni, founder and president of the Table Group, a consulting firm specializing in leadership development, follows on a formula he has developed in earlier works like The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. He mixes the page-turning devices of mystery fiction--very short chapters and a fast-moving narrative--with a subtext of business concepts and practices.

In this case, he creates a character, Jude Cousins, a young marketing manager who starts his own consulting firm. In the course of building that business, Cousins interacts with a series of clients--an exercise equipment manager, a hospital, a hotel and a software company--only to find that each is hampered by functional silos. Through the narrative, Cousins manages to develop a simple, yet powerful method for breaking through silos and...