When I first read this book, I couldn't believe that someone had captured the essence of my organizational frustrations so succinctly. 

The first part of the book talks about the good reasons organizations decentralize.  The second part of the book talks about the huge costs of decentralization.  These reasons and the associated costs lead to a pendulum effect of an organization centralizing to save money and then decentralizing to get good customer service.  

The last part of the book takes on this very issue and discusses how to stop the pendulum: a healthy central services organization and how to build it.   

I was impressed enough with the content of the book that I contacted Dean and hired him to come out for a day and talk to our IT Directors and the management of our central services shop.