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1-Page Summary of The Silo Effect

Overview

In the book Team of Teams (2015), Stanley McChrystal laid out several ways that even large organizations can benefit from the agility and savvy of small teams. By building a team of teams, companies can better manage complex issues that often mean life or death for a company. In order to be more effective and profitable, industrialization has been key in breaking down processes into smaller units and training workers to perform highly skilled tasks.

However, silos can be a problem. They cause companies to lose their flexibility and creativity and make it difficult for them to work together. Furthermore, silos are in our heads as well; we need to get rid of them if we want to improve ourselves individually and as a society.

The key points in this article will explain why silos exist and how to modify them.

In this article, you will learn how New York City made fires more predictable for firefighters; how Sony was stuck in an “octopus pot” for too long; and why Facebook insists its new employees go to boot camp.

Big Idea #1: The prevalence of silos in businesses or individuals’ minds causes communication problems.

Silos are more than just physical structures. They exist in our minds and social circles, and they’re harmful for many reasons. For example, silos discourage people from working together because the groups inside of them don’t communicate with each other. In New York City, some government departments were like silos to the extent that even fire department workers and emergency call operators couldn’t talk to each other.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg made it a top priority to share information between departments and have them work together more effectively. He also pushed for open office spaces, so that the fire department, finance department and police investigations department could better communicate with each other.

It’s a challenge to share data and cooperate within large organizations. People tend to live in silos, choosing only to socialize with people who are similar to them.

In addition to specialization, we also value expertise. We respect experts and their opinions even though they work in silos within their fields.

Specialized silos have their merits, as well. They help us organize our social lives, workplaces and institutions. However, increased accountability can be a problem in the workplace when teams are only accountable for certain parts of projects. This can lead to competition or the withholding of information which wastes resources or even causes risks.

Big Idea #2: Studies on how societies classify culture help us understand why silos exist.

Anthropology is the study of human beings. It can be divided into two main categories: physical anthropology and social anthropology. Physical anthropologists focus on evolution and biology, whereas social anthropologists focus on society and culture.

The field of anthropology split into two separate fields in the twentieth century. Before this, anthropologists studied how a “primitive” person became more “modern”. They often considered non-Western societies to be primitive by default. In the twentieth century, however, anthropologists began to study non-Western societies in order to discover that they had their own social systems and cultural norms that were different from Western models but still worked effectively.

French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, who was one of the most influential intellectuals of his time, did anthropological research in Algeria. However, he had a moment where he realized that merely being an insider to French culture wasn’t enough to understand it. He needed someone from outside France for a better perspective. Once he began researching with an Algerian student as his partner, they found that both were able to see and understand more about French society because they each had different perspectives on it. In his research, Bourdieu discovered that there was some sort of cultural dogma within France itself.