Although they might welcome opportunities to share information and knowledge across traditional boundaries, their organisation’s structure, culture and training may not facilitate this way of working. Indeed, groups and individuals may work in silos without realizing that they are doing so. , TED Talk, Get comfortable with being uncomfortableįor Kate Turner, director of Motivational Leadership, working in silos means that groups ‘ do not want to share information or knowledge with other individuals they work with.’ Although Turner is right to reflect on the lack of collaboration that occurs in siloed organisations, her point regarding the intentional nature of silo working, as something that employees actively choose, requires further discussion. All comfort has done is maintain the status quo. Keeping things the way they’ve been is comfortable. Additionally, although they might be a specialist in their particular field, they might fail to connect what they are doing to the work of other individuals or departments. In other words, they lack what is called ‘fluid intelligence’: the capacity to think flexibly across boundaries. Indeed, a person who thinks in terms of silos might struggle to see beyond established ways of doing things. A silo mentality is a way of thinking that is rigid and somewhat simplistic. While the phrase ‘working in silos’ may refer to a kind of tribalism within a company, it can also refer to the way a person thinks. Steven Poole argues, furthermore, that ‘ silos exist when people in different parts of an organisation don’t talk to each other or share information enough’. Gillian Tett, an anthropologist turned financial journalist, ‘ silos are cultural phenomena, which arise out of the systems we use to classify and organize the world ’. It is often employed as a metaphor for groups of people (e.g., a team is a ‘container’ of colleagues) who work independently from other groups.Īccording to Dr. Manufacturing tend to see themselves as champions of quality, but Marketing see them as order fillers, while R&D view them as risk-averse Luddites.What does working in silos mean? In simple terms, working in silos means operating in a kind of bubble-on your own or as part of an insular team or department.Īlthough the historical definition of a silo is a container (traditionally used on farms for storing grain or cattle food), the word also has a more abstract meaning today. R&D tend to see themselves as securing the organisation’s future, but Marketing see them as tinkering with tech toys, while Manufacturing view them as impractical boffins. Marketing tend to see themselves as business builders, but R&D see them as offering customers the impossible, while Manufacturing see them living it up on expenses. Marketing, R&D and Manufacturing, three key functions in most high-tech firms, often harbour less than glowing impressions of each other: 3 Ī tell-tale sign of this is when colleagues in other parts of the organisation are labelled ‘unprofessional’, ‘incompetent’, ‘untrustworthy’, or worse. Silo mentality manifests as poor coordination, cooperation, and collaboration between key functions, projects, areas, etc.Įach silo, fiefdom, or faction has its own subculture that sees “us” as different, often very different, to “them”.
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