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  • Silos, Politics, and Turf Wars

  • Written by: Patrick Lencioni
  • Narrated by: Eric Conger
  • Length: 3 hrs and 34 mins
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars (21 ratings)

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Silos, Politics, and Turf Wars

Written by: Patrick Lencioni
Narrated by: Eric Conger
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Publisher's Summary

"Silos" are organizations' vertical structures—but the word has become synonymous with barriers to workplace effectiveness and connotes deep political infighting. Silos devastate organizations, kill productivity, push good people out the door, and jeopardize the achievement of corporate goals. They cause stress, exasperation, and disappointment by forcing employees to fight bloody, unwinnable battles with people who should be teammates.

Like his other fables, SILOS, POLITICS, AND TURF WARS is fiction in realistic form, involving not one, but three organizations, all struggling to eliminate their silos and bridge a sense of alignment back in place.

©2006 Patrick Lencioni (P)2006 Audio Renaissance, a division of Holtzbrinck Publishers, LLC

What the critics say

Audie Award Finalist, Business Information/Education, 2007

"Lencioni's proposal is so full of common sense...that managers will be eager to apply it themselves. Just as refreshing is Lencioni's use of character and plot, which is far above average for the business genre." (Publishers Weekly)

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Compelling but flawed...

Lencioni is highly intelligent, creative and a true management guru. I remember attending one of his workshops and being riveted the entire 8 hours. He really is compelling and insightful. However, this book falls short at a fundamental level. He conceives of silos as a problem that can be overcome by a management team alone that brainstorms creative solutions and then sends the new direction down to the rest of the organization. Time and time again we have seen how top-down change management initiatives fall short because they are not participatory and they do not engage the minds, ideas and passion of the entire company. A 'thematic goal' or 'rallying cry' as he alternately refers to it, is in his explanation something conceived by the leadership team and then passed down from executive to front line manager and so on. Lencioni suggests that this will mobilize the entire organization to achieve what is needed as in times of emergency. He smartly indicates that this goal should not just be about metrics, but rather a qualitative goal that is operationalized through a series of defining objectives, standard operating objectives, and eventually metrics. But again, something conceived by an executive team and then passed down to the masses, rarely creates the engagement he suggests. Nor does it typically create the best solutions, because it does not draw on the collective wisdom of the organization's members.
Additionally, the entire book is built on the premise that creating a kind of emergency in the organization will be critical to developing this rallying cry and achieving objectives. This kind of leadership is simply another form of manipulation, and most employees sense this. Lencioni tries to deal with this issue by saying that before you give people metrics, you must first establish the rallying cry, the defining objectives and the standard operational objectives. But the tension between an leadership initiative built on a fabricated emergency and genuine organizational engagement is not resolved, because it is still a subtle form of executive-led manipulation that most employees will see through quickly.
Lencioni's vast experience and insight shines through in this book, but it is flawed from the beginning because it replicates the outdated principles of traditional organizational development where executive coaches teach an executive team how to better sell their agenda to the organization. I think this is understandable because this is the kind of work that Lencioni has long engaged in, and the mindset that he operates from. I want to emphasize again, I consider him insightful, brilliant in many ways, and motivated by the desire to help. I just think he needs to reexamine how he conceives of organizations, and change efforts within them.

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