By Patrick M. LencioniThis is a leadership fable about destroying the barriers that turn colleagues into competitors. The author addresses the costly and maddening issue of silos, the barriers that create organizational politics. Silos devastate organizations, kill productivity, push good people out of the door, and jeopardize the achievement of corporate goals. The book tells a fictional, but eerily realistic story about an eager young management consultant struggling to launch his practice by solving one of the more universal and frustrating problems faced by his clients. Through trial and error, he develops a simple yet ground-breaking approach for helping them transform confusion and infighting into clarity and alignment.

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Local authorities are worried about the knock-on effects of the budget deficit in the National Health Service. Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt revealed that at 512 million pounds the deficit had more than doubled in the last year. Now councils are concerned about the impact on their work.The Local Government Association’s adult social care spokesman, Councillor David Rogers, said health and social care were two sides of the same coin and a financial crisis in one would have an impact on the other. “We are beginning to see some worrying examples of where budget problems are causing some NHS trusts to withdraw from joint projects, leaving local authorities to pick up the tab,” he said.

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The Government is predicting that 8 million tenants will be living in better homes by the end of the decade. The forecast came from Ruth Kelly, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, as she opened the final round of bidding for funding from the Decent Homes Programme.Councils and Arms Length Management Organisations planning to make bids have until the end of July to do so. Ms Kelly said the programme would have improved more than three-and-a-half million homes by investing 40 billion pounds.

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