"Silos, Politics and Turf Wars; A leadership fable about destroying the barriers that turn colleagues into competitors" by Patrick Lencioni is a great a realistic story about Jude Cousins who develops a system to help clients transform confusion and infighting into clarity and alignment. Lencioni addresses the costly and maddening issue of silos, the barriers that create organizational politics. Silos devastate organizations, kill productivity, push good people out the door and jeopardize the achievement of corporate goals.
I picked up this book on CD on my way out of the office to one of our field offices. I had a six-hour drive ahead of me and had just left a frustrating situation behind in the office. I needed something to help me solve my frustration and was momentarily annoyed when the fable in this story had the gentleman in question quit his job as a result of his frustration with politics. This was not the answer I was looking for! Slowly the solution, however, was made clear throughout the story and I was surprised to see that a viable answer was given.
Create a sense of emergency, some kind of crisis that a team can work towards, together. Bring a team together through a sense of urgency, and purpose and create the parameters in which the team can solve things together. If everyone is working towards a goal together it reduces the infighting. Companies who have been through crisis together usually do not have infighting, because they have a common bond. If there is no crisis, create one and get everyone together to work towards a solution. It is interesting, but as is the case with many theories you have to be in a position to implement them in order to test their viability and success. Still it is an interesting solution and I enjoyed listening to the story, especially since it is not written as an academic book, but as a genuine, realistic story.
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