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The Silo Effect: The Peril of Expertise and the Promise of Breaking Down Barriers
Award-winning journalist Gillian Tett “applies her anthropologist’s lens to the problem of why so many organizations still suffer from a failure to communicate. It’s a profound idea, richly analyzed” (The Wall Street Journal), about how our tendency to create functional departments—silos—hinders our work.The Silo Effect asks a basic why do humans working in modern institutions collectively act in ways that sometimes seem stupid? Why do normally clever people fail to see risks and opportunities that later seem blindingly obvious? Why, as Daniel Kahnemann, the psychologist put it, are we sometimes so “blind to our own blindness”? Gillian Tett, “a first-rate journalist and a good storyteller” (The New York Times), answers these questions by plumbing her background as an anthropologist and her experience reporting on the financial crisis in 2008. In The Silo Effect, she shares eight different tales of the silo syndrome, spanning Bloomberg’s City Hall in New York, the Bank of England in London, Cleveland Clinic hospital in Ohio, UBS bank in Switzerland, Facebook in San Francisco, Sony in Tokyo, the BlueMountain hedge fund, and the Chicago police. Some of these narratives illustrate how foolishly people can behave when they are mastered by silos. Others, however, show how institutions and individuals can master their silos instead. “Highly intelligent, enjoyable, and enlivened by a string of vivid case studies….The Silo Effect is also genuinely important, because Tett’s prescription for curing the pathological silo-isation of business and government is refreshingly unorthodox and, in my view, convincing” (Financial Times). This is “an enjoyable call to action for better integration within organizations” (Publishers Weekly).
305 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 11, 2014
225 people are currently reading
2565 people want to read
About the author
Gillian Tett
10 books159 followersGillian Tett is a British author and journalist at the Financial Times, where she is a markets and finance columnist and U.S. Managing Editor. She has written about the financial instruments that were part of the cause of the financial crisis that started in the fourth quarter of 2007, such as CDOs, credit default swaps, SIVs, conduits, and SPVs. She became renowned for her early warning that a financial crisis was looming.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 140 reviews
June 11, 2018
Fucking brilliant! We are so clever these days that we are going more stupid by the second. We are so deeply thinking that we can't think about things slightly to the side of our daily experience. Our expertise is so advanced it's going to be useless real soon (if it isn't already!). Love it!
October 16, 2015
A bit disappointing. There isn't enough material here for a book, and it reads at times as if she is trying to stretch it out as much as possible. And like many books today it could have done with proof-reading.
March 15, 2016
Gillian Tett é jornalista do Financial Times, colunista de mercados e finanças, e é doutorada em Antropologia Social. Provavelmente este cruzamento de saberes fez com que fosse uma das jornalistas a soar os alarmes para crise financeira em 2006, tendo participado no documentário explicativo da crise “Inside Job” (2010). O seu mais recente livro “The Silo Effect: The Peril of Expertise and the Promise of Breaking Down Barriers” (2015) dá conta de um problema que anteviu a partir dos estudos etnográficos realizados sobre a organização da banca, e que entretanto conseguiu extrapolar para a generalidade das organizações humanas complexas.
Segundo Tett, os “silos” organizacionais surgem quando as pessoas de uma mesma organização não falam umas com as outras ou não partilham informação. Ao proceder deste modo as organizações criam áreas internas estanques, que cedo ou tarde acabam por competir entre si, podendo colocar em risco toda a organização. Como jornalista, e seguindo um estilo gladwelliano, Tett apresenta em cada capítulo a história de uma organização para solidificar a argumentação. Para apresentar os impactos do problema apresenta a história da Sony e da crise financeira de 2008, por outro lado e para apresentar possibilidades de resposta ao problema, apresenta dois casos de sucesso uma Clínica de Cleveland e a empresa Facebook.
Nos anos 1970 e 1980 a Sony tornou-se líder mundial com as televisões Trinitron e o Walkman. O império cresceu, complexificou-se, tendo dado origem a subdivisão interna em 25 sub-organizações. No curto prazo a eficiência aumentou e os lucros aumentaram, mas com o passar do tempo começou a surgir a competição interna, e com ela o declínio da cooperação criando os silos e consequentemente a impossibilidade criativa e de inovação. Um dos exemplos mais gritantes dado por Tett surge num dia de apresentação de novos produtos da Sony no final dos anos 1990, em que o CEO da Sony apresentou em palco, nada menos que três leitores de música portáteis diferentes, cada um com o seu codec proprietário, o que ilustra na perfeição a incapacidade de entendimento interno na empresa. Não fosse a Playstation, e a Sony já teria implodido por esta altura.
Existem vários capítulos dedicados à crise financeira vistos de diferentes perspectivas que acabam por, e em síntese, dar conta de uma rede interconectada mas vedada pela complexidade intrínseca, que tornou possível o crescimento exponencial isolado de estruturas, e consequentemente o desabamento do todo quando alguns dos silos caíram. O trabalho de Tett na análise dos comportamentos de várias figuras proeminentes do sistema, tanto dos grandes bancos, como fundos, como regulação é imensamente rico e permite-nos ver toda crise num tom humanamente menos negro.
Em contra-ciclo são apresentados dois exemplos extremamente interessantes, pela forma como perceberam desde cedo os problemas da criação de silos internos, e como procuraram agir para impedir a sua formação. O caso da Clínica de Cleveland é tanto mais importante pela área delicada que trabalha, a saúde, contudo não está imune a este tipo de problemas, algo que nós em Portugal facilmente podemos depreender se seguirmos algumas notícias dos nossos hospitais. Ou seja, a comunicação entre equipas, entre departamentos ou entre hospitais é débil, e com isso surgem imensos problemas. Em Cleveland uma das formas de dar conta dos problemas internos foi criar equipas mistas, terminar com os departamentos fechados em áreas científicas, e criar novas equipas em função das doenças e suas necessidades. Deste modo, ainda que só depois de muita guerra interna, conseguiram por exemplo colocar a trabalhar juntos numa mesma equipa — cardiologistas, neurologistas e psicólogos.
Mas o exemplo mais impactante é o do Facebook, se a Sony ilustra na perfeição os problemas dos silos, o Facebook ilustra quase na perfeição o modo como os combater. Compreendendo os problemas das grandes empresas, que dependem fortemente da burocracia para funcionar, e sendo uma empresa de “social media”, foi pensado algo que pudesse combater a burocracia, tendo por base partido da ideia do social. Ou seja, a Facebook acredita que a única forma de combater os silos é criando laços fortes entre os trabalhadores, de modo a que eles não se desliguem uns dos outros, e consigam sempre que necessitem recorrer uns aos outros. Para isso existem duas estruturas fundamentais na Facebook: o bootcamp e o hackamonth.
O bootcamp consiste numa espécie de formação/workshop de 6 semanas pela qual todos os empregados, juniores ou seniores, têm de passar quando entram na empresa. Sendo que o objetivo não é preparar competências técnicas, mas sociais e motivacionais. Ou seja, por um lado levar as pessoas a compreender melhor em que área da empresa querem realmente trabalhar, por outro conseguir que estabeleçam laços fortes com os colegas do curso. Pelos estudos já realizados pela empresa, os laços criados nestas 6 semanas perduram por anos dentro da empresa, mesmo estando a trabalhar em departamentos completamente distintos.
A segunda estrutura é mais complexa, e difícil de imitar, mas é aquela que mais me impressionou, e aquela que eu próprio gostaria de ver implementada em muitas outras instituições, desde logo nas universidades. O hackamonth consiste em reuniões periódicas na qual se encorajam pessoas que estão há mais de um ano a trabalhar numa equipa/projeto a mudar durante um mês para outra área completamente diferente. Isto é verdadeiramente delicioso, e explica em parte, porque a Facebook foi capaz de passar a barreira dos 10 anos de vida. O que estas trocas internas permitem é uma enorme germinação de ideias e constante inovação, grandes saltos criativos, algo que só é possível com a constante introdução de pessoas novas (o sangue novo como se costuma dizer).
[Silos da Universidade]
Hoje nas universidades vivemos com gerações envelhecidas, há mais de 10 anos que os quadros não são renovados, e muita da inovação que fazíamos começa agora a arrastar-se. Precisamos de pessoas novas nas estruturas das universidades, mas precisamos também de aprender a trabalhar mais juntos. Isto é um discurso que já existe na universidade atual, já se compreendeu o problema e se reconhece a necessidade da interdisciplinaridade, mas do compreender ao fazer vai uma enorme distância. Hoje continuamos fechados nos nosso silos, quando saímos e tentamos estabelecer laços, toda a componente burocrática previamente instalada pela complexidade institucional nos cai em cima, e joga por terra muitos dos esforços encetados.
Por outro lado, como a própria Tett reconhece, os silos são ainda precisos, não podemos sonhar com uma revolução que arrase todos estes “edifícios”, porque assim como a colaboração é fundamental na gestação de novas ideias, a competição é fundamental para a especialização que é quem torna possível muitas dessas ideias. Como ela diz, “Our world does not function effectively if it is always rigidly streamlined” mas “A dedicated team of trained firefighters is likely to be better at fighting fires than a random group of amateurs” No fundo o que precisamos não é de uma revolução, mas o reconhecimento do problema e ações concretas para lidar com o mesmo.
As abordagens da Facebook são uma hipótese, mas Tett, enquanto antropóloga sugere outras, nomeadamente a criação de cargos nas empresas para pessoas com literacia em diferentes especialidades, capazes de criar pontes entre diferentes departamentos, capazes de traduzir as linguagens entre si, e assim abrir espaços de colaboração. Todos os estudos sobre criatividade e inovação mostram que estas surgem na intersecção de fronteiras, internas das áreas ou do conhecimento existente sobre as mesmas. Nesse sentido é vital que reconheçamos o elefante branco no meio das salas das nossas instituições, mais ainda em pleno século XXI.
Pode ser lido em http://virtual-illusion.blogspot.pt/2...
Segundo Tett, os “silos” organizacionais surgem quando as pessoas de uma mesma organização não falam umas com as outras ou não partilham informação. Ao proceder deste modo as organizações criam áreas internas estanques, que cedo ou tarde acabam por competir entre si, podendo colocar em risco toda a organização. Como jornalista, e seguindo um estilo gladwelliano, Tett apresenta em cada capítulo a história de uma organização para solidificar a argumentação. Para apresentar os impactos do problema apresenta a história da Sony e da crise financeira de 2008, por outro lado e para apresentar possibilidades de resposta ao problema, apresenta dois casos de sucesso uma Clínica de Cleveland e a empresa Facebook.
Nos anos 1970 e 1980 a Sony tornou-se líder mundial com as televisões Trinitron e o Walkman. O império cresceu, complexificou-se, tendo dado origem a subdivisão interna em 25 sub-organizações. No curto prazo a eficiência aumentou e os lucros aumentaram, mas com o passar do tempo começou a surgir a competição interna, e com ela o declínio da cooperação criando os silos e consequentemente a impossibilidade criativa e de inovação. Um dos exemplos mais gritantes dado por Tett surge num dia de apresentação de novos produtos da Sony no final dos anos 1990, em que o CEO da Sony apresentou em palco, nada menos que três leitores de música portáteis diferentes, cada um com o seu codec proprietário, o que ilustra na perfeição a incapacidade de entendimento interno na empresa. Não fosse a Playstation, e a Sony já teria implodido por esta altura.
Existem vários capítulos dedicados à crise financeira vistos de diferentes perspectivas que acabam por, e em síntese, dar conta de uma rede interconectada mas vedada pela complexidade intrínseca, que tornou possível o crescimento exponencial isolado de estruturas, e consequentemente o desabamento do todo quando alguns dos silos caíram. O trabalho de Tett na análise dos comportamentos de várias figuras proeminentes do sistema, tanto dos grandes bancos, como fundos, como regulação é imensamente rico e permite-nos ver toda crise num tom humanamente menos negro.
Em contra-ciclo são apresentados dois exemplos extremamente interessantes, pela forma como perceberam desde cedo os problemas da criação de silos internos, e como procuraram agir para impedir a sua formação. O caso da Clínica de Cleveland é tanto mais importante pela área delicada que trabalha, a saúde, contudo não está imune a este tipo de problemas, algo que nós em Portugal facilmente podemos depreender se seguirmos algumas notícias dos nossos hospitais. Ou seja, a comunicação entre equipas, entre departamentos ou entre hospitais é débil, e com isso surgem imensos problemas. Em Cleveland uma das formas de dar conta dos problemas internos foi criar equipas mistas, terminar com os departamentos fechados em áreas científicas, e criar novas equipas em função das doenças e suas necessidades. Deste modo, ainda que só depois de muita guerra interna, conseguiram por exemplo colocar a trabalhar juntos numa mesma equipa — cardiologistas, neurologistas e psicólogos.
Mas o exemplo mais impactante é o do Facebook, se a Sony ilustra na perfeição os problemas dos silos, o Facebook ilustra quase na perfeição o modo como os combater. Compreendendo os problemas das grandes empresas, que dependem fortemente da burocracia para funcionar, e sendo uma empresa de “social media”, foi pensado algo que pudesse combater a burocracia, tendo por base partido da ideia do social. Ou seja, a Facebook acredita que a única forma de combater os silos é criando laços fortes entre os trabalhadores, de modo a que eles não se desliguem uns dos outros, e consigam sempre que necessitem recorrer uns aos outros. Para isso existem duas estruturas fundamentais na Facebook: o bootcamp e o hackamonth.
O bootcamp consiste numa espécie de formação/workshop de 6 semanas pela qual todos os empregados, juniores ou seniores, têm de passar quando entram na empresa. Sendo que o objetivo não é preparar competências técnicas, mas sociais e motivacionais. Ou seja, por um lado levar as pessoas a compreender melhor em que área da empresa querem realmente trabalhar, por outro conseguir que estabeleçam laços fortes com os colegas do curso. Pelos estudos já realizados pela empresa, os laços criados nestas 6 semanas perduram por anos dentro da empresa, mesmo estando a trabalhar em departamentos completamente distintos.
A segunda estrutura é mais complexa, e difícil de imitar, mas é aquela que mais me impressionou, e aquela que eu próprio gostaria de ver implementada em muitas outras instituições, desde logo nas universidades. O hackamonth consiste em reuniões periódicas na qual se encorajam pessoas que estão há mais de um ano a trabalhar numa equipa/projeto a mudar durante um mês para outra área completamente diferente. Isto é verdadeiramente delicioso, e explica em parte, porque a Facebook foi capaz de passar a barreira dos 10 anos de vida. O que estas trocas internas permitem é uma enorme germinação de ideias e constante inovação, grandes saltos criativos, algo que só é possível com a constante introdução de pessoas novas (o sangue novo como se costuma dizer).
[Silos da Universidade]
Hoje nas universidades vivemos com gerações envelhecidas, há mais de 10 anos que os quadros não são renovados, e muita da inovação que fazíamos começa agora a arrastar-se. Precisamos de pessoas novas nas estruturas das universidades, mas precisamos também de aprender a trabalhar mais juntos. Isto é um discurso que já existe na universidade atual, já se compreendeu o problema e se reconhece a necessidade da interdisciplinaridade, mas do compreender ao fazer vai uma enorme distância. Hoje continuamos fechados nos nosso silos, quando saímos e tentamos estabelecer laços, toda a componente burocrática previamente instalada pela complexidade institucional nos cai em cima, e joga por terra muitos dos esforços encetados.
Por outro lado, como a própria Tett reconhece, os silos são ainda precisos, não podemos sonhar com uma revolução que arrase todos estes “edifícios”, porque assim como a colaboração é fundamental na gestação de novas ideias, a competição é fundamental para a especialização que é quem torna possível muitas dessas ideias. Como ela diz, “Our world does not function effectively if it is always rigidly streamlined” mas “A dedicated team of trained firefighters is likely to be better at fighting fires than a random group of amateurs” No fundo o que precisamos não é de uma revolução, mas o reconhecimento do problema e ações concretas para lidar com o mesmo.
As abordagens da Facebook são uma hipótese, mas Tett, enquanto antropóloga sugere outras, nomeadamente a criação de cargos nas empresas para pessoas com literacia em diferentes especialidades, capazes de criar pontes entre diferentes departamentos, capazes de traduzir as linguagens entre si, e assim abrir espaços de colaboração. Todos os estudos sobre criatividade e inovação mostram que estas surgem na intersecção de fronteiras, internas das áreas ou do conhecimento existente sobre as mesmas. Nesse sentido é vital que reconheçamos o elefante branco no meio das salas das nossas instituições, mais ainda em pleno século XXI.
Pode ser lido em http://virtual-illusion.blogspot.pt/2...
May 8, 2016
I am ALL ABOUT this book. Gillian Tett applies anthropological theory and perspectives to organizational culture in a provocative and engaging manner. The Silo Effect examines how personal and institutional outlooks are impacted by identity constructs, competitive culture, information technology, and spatial design/architecture. Tett clearly illustrates how easily the flow of information can be hampered by superficial variables - and how profound the ramifications can be. The case studies Tett examines depict a wide range of organizations, such as banks, police departments, hospitals, and tech companies, and the composite portrait of institutional culture underscores the value of information and its timely/coherent dissemination and interpretation. As someone working towards a degree in information science and technology, these patterns really resonate with me.
I started reading a library copy of this book. Then, about half way through, I ordered myself a copy, because I knew it would become indispensable for my personal and professional development. The Silo Effect, Monoculture, Why Societies Need Dissent, and The Ghost Map are on my personal shelf of game changing non-fiction. :)
I started reading a library copy of this book. Then, about half way through, I ordered myself a copy, because I knew it would become indispensable for my personal and professional development. The Silo Effect, Monoculture, Why Societies Need Dissent, and The Ghost Map are on my personal shelf of game changing non-fiction. :)
September 28, 2015
I was watching a recent episode of Charlie Rose and Gillian Tett was one of his guests (she was quite impressive). She had just completed The Silo Effect and when I heard that title and got a sense of how smart she was from the show I simply had to buy it. And I am so glad I did. The book is so relevant and I highly recommend it, especially to my Microsoft friends. While we all know silos are a problem and lead Steve Ballmer to start a "One Microsoft" initiative prior to his retiremet, it is another thing entirely to really go deep into the problem and come up with ideas and actions to overcome them. With the eye, of all things, an anthropologist, she has chapters on companies that failed because of silos and chapters on companies that have had success overcoming them (such as Facebook). There is no magic bullet to overcoming silos but I think reading this book and adopting the mindset it promotes will serve you well in your career.
April 12, 2023
Overly lengthy anecdotes distract from any data driven conclusions or action recommendations. Seemed like more of an advertisement why anthropology is a worthy study instead of lessons on silos. Recommend “Range” by David Epstein instead.
September 6, 2015
Of the nine chapters I found only three compelling. The rest were too anecdotal for me. I was expecting much more on the anthropology and sociology of silos. Too loose. Not tight enough on the original thesis. Read more like nine newspaper articles and less as a cohesive book.
December 6, 2015
Sharing is good, hoarding is bad: that is the slightly oversimplified takeaway from this book when it concerns corporate behaviour and internal operations. Far too many companies are creating departments or silos – empires within an empire – and forgetting to share and cooperate with each other.
It can be very frustrating, even internally, when you can’t get the real level of collegiate cooperation and information flow from someone allegedly on the same side, possibly even sitting in the same open-plan office. Even functional departments can tend to man the barricades and adopt an isolationist policy: the less functional departments – and boy can there be many of them – are even worse!
This book takes a look at how and why we, as leaders, managers or workers in a company, can naturally gravitate to create these silos and looks at the benefits many companies have achieved by breaking down the internal walls within.
It was an interesting combination of the author’s background as an anthropologist and journalist at the Financial Times, which included extensive reporting on the 2008 financial crisis. It is not a dry book and the reader is taken on a whirlwind tour around the world, looking at places such as the Bank of England, City Hall in New York and Cleveland Clinic in Ohio and examines how these institutions suffered from the silo effect and slowly discovered their hammers to start breaking them down. Sometimes a silo can be a powerful thing to have, yet the secret is identifying when this is apposite and how to best utilise it. With this book as your guide, you may be significantly better informed as a result.
You don’t have to have any real interest in business to enjoy this book. It is also an engaging read to the curious, generalist reader and naturally those in business stand to gain a lot if they are prepared to open their eyes and minds! There is so much potential, whether it is discovering how to better organise working environments and teams or the bigger picture of a true, connected global enterprise. There is likely to be something for everybody.
There is a fair bit of history and scene setting that could be a turn-off for the impatient sort of reader, although it does not feel like unnecessary padding or imbecilic background material in any case. Reading about the trials and tribulations of Sony and their product teams who didn’t seemingly communicate and then launched products that would cannibalise each other just made you want to groan out loud. Then you laugh out loud to discover how their new western president sought to break down silos and the word is apparently unknown in Japanese, so in desperation, a translator turned the phrase into takotsubo or ‘octopus pot.’ Yet this was a good description as Japanese octopus pots are narrow containers that are easy for an octopus to slide into, but almost impossible to exit – describing many processes at the company: yet Sony staff had never heard the word takotsubo used to describe their company and many wondered whether this was some kind of clever British joke?
So all in all, an interesting and engaging book. It does not offer a step-by-step guide to resolving a possible problem, yet it does make you aware of the possible issues that can be lurking within your company and gives you the ability to consider steps to better manage it.
Autamme.com
It can be very frustrating, even internally, when you can’t get the real level of collegiate cooperation and information flow from someone allegedly on the same side, possibly even sitting in the same open-plan office. Even functional departments can tend to man the barricades and adopt an isolationist policy: the less functional departments – and boy can there be many of them – are even worse!
This book takes a look at how and why we, as leaders, managers or workers in a company, can naturally gravitate to create these silos and looks at the benefits many companies have achieved by breaking down the internal walls within.
It was an interesting combination of the author’s background as an anthropologist and journalist at the Financial Times, which included extensive reporting on the 2008 financial crisis. It is not a dry book and the reader is taken on a whirlwind tour around the world, looking at places such as the Bank of England, City Hall in New York and Cleveland Clinic in Ohio and examines how these institutions suffered from the silo effect and slowly discovered their hammers to start breaking them down. Sometimes a silo can be a powerful thing to have, yet the secret is identifying when this is apposite and how to best utilise it. With this book as your guide, you may be significantly better informed as a result.
You don’t have to have any real interest in business to enjoy this book. It is also an engaging read to the curious, generalist reader and naturally those in business stand to gain a lot if they are prepared to open their eyes and minds! There is so much potential, whether it is discovering how to better organise working environments and teams or the bigger picture of a true, connected global enterprise. There is likely to be something for everybody.
There is a fair bit of history and scene setting that could be a turn-off for the impatient sort of reader, although it does not feel like unnecessary padding or imbecilic background material in any case. Reading about the trials and tribulations of Sony and their product teams who didn’t seemingly communicate and then launched products that would cannibalise each other just made you want to groan out loud. Then you laugh out loud to discover how their new western president sought to break down silos and the word is apparently unknown in Japanese, so in desperation, a translator turned the phrase into takotsubo or ‘octopus pot.’ Yet this was a good description as Japanese octopus pots are narrow containers that are easy for an octopus to slide into, but almost impossible to exit – describing many processes at the company: yet Sony staff had never heard the word takotsubo used to describe their company and many wondered whether this was some kind of clever British joke?
So all in all, an interesting and engaging book. It does not offer a step-by-step guide to resolving a possible problem, yet it does make you aware of the possible issues that can be lurking within your company and gives you the ability to consider steps to better manage it.
Autamme.com
June 8, 2016
Tett's writing is brisk and trenchant. Her anthropological roots show and help as she makes a compelling case - business entropy happens. As we scale businesses or brands, we tend to isolate left hand from right. The tendency is so pervasive and worrying several startups (Facebook is one example she uses) fight to keep teams small, innovative and hungry.
How they combat the inevitable siloing of teams, content and meaning was interesting and felt RIGHT. I've worked in large firms and siloing was a real problem. Putting ideas, content or even friends into silos isn't limited to big companies either. Today I saw new work from a favorite Chapel Hill artist.
Patrick Dougherty wraps willow strands into stunning, temporary, and beautiful sculptures. Patrick's sculptures feel like the embodiment of the immunology and genetic engineering the University of North Carolina is creating to cure cancer. Why not ask Patrick to build a sculpture for UNC's Lineberger Cancer Center I wondered.
Willows wrapped into sweeping lines and engaging sculpture to look like what immunology is - at least to a non-researcher or doctor. Why not get out of the box and show people (i.e. donors) what UNC is doing via Patrick's art I thought over breakfast.
Since I jumped several paradigms I'm betting there will be a Greek Chorus of "Can't Do It" police at UNC, but, as Tett points out, our futures and our ability to cure cancer is wound up like a willow in paradigm jumping. Cross your fingers and I'm in for a few thousand to my Tech Cures Cancer Fund if UNC uses the idea.
How they combat the inevitable siloing of teams, content and meaning was interesting and felt RIGHT. I've worked in large firms and siloing was a real problem. Putting ideas, content or even friends into silos isn't limited to big companies either. Today I saw new work from a favorite Chapel Hill artist.
Patrick Dougherty wraps willow strands into stunning, temporary, and beautiful sculptures. Patrick's sculptures feel like the embodiment of the immunology and genetic engineering the University of North Carolina is creating to cure cancer. Why not ask Patrick to build a sculpture for UNC's Lineberger Cancer Center I wondered.
Willows wrapped into sweeping lines and engaging sculpture to look like what immunology is - at least to a non-researcher or doctor. Why not get out of the box and show people (i.e. donors) what UNC is doing via Patrick's art I thought over breakfast.
Since I jumped several paradigms I'm betting there will be a Greek Chorus of "Can't Do It" police at UNC, but, as Tett points out, our futures and our ability to cure cancer is wound up like a willow in paradigm jumping. Cross your fingers and I'm in for a few thousand to my Tech Cures Cancer Fund if UNC uses the idea.
December 15, 2024
I came to this book out of frustration with the siloing I have been encountering while trying to conduct cross-disciplinary scholarly research. I was intrigued by the book's premise, and as I started reading, I was absolutely drawn to the idea of exploring this issue from an anthropologist's perspective. The book's first chapter was fantastic, and in general, many of the chapters that offer examples of the negative effects of Siloing were profoundly illustrative of the way Siloing can be detrimental to the shared goals of any large organization, whether it be a corporation, or an academic discipline (though business, not acadamia, is the book's focus). The chapter about Sony was particularly interesting.
Where the book falls flat for me is in its praise for companies who, internally, focus on preventing silos while simultaneously building social silos that are contributing to rampant social and political polarization. Facebook, in particular, seems to be held up as a model. Still, while they apparently try to avoid silos in their corporate culture, their entire business model is based on steering society into cultural, social, racial, political, and economic silos.
There was a not-so-subtle "zero-sum" basis for encouraging silos in competitors, which is directly addressed by a chapter about how an investment firm achieved success by capitalizing off of the financial crisis of 2009.
I guess the part of this book that I found disappointing was that it seemed to be built upon the idea that the worst thing about silos is that they can be bad for business. The book sort of treats financial success as the ultimate end, but I would have loved to see a book that approached this issue from a more philosophical perspective.
With that said, it's still worth reading, and it can be a great "required office read" if you work at a company with a siloing problem, even if the praise for "successful silo-buster" companies seems ill-informed, premature, and perhaps even ethically unsupported by the book.
Where the book falls flat for me is in its praise for companies who, internally, focus on preventing silos while simultaneously building social silos that are contributing to rampant social and political polarization. Facebook, in particular, seems to be held up as a model. Still, while they apparently try to avoid silos in their corporate culture, their entire business model is based on steering society into cultural, social, racial, political, and economic silos.
There was a not-so-subtle "zero-sum" basis for encouraging silos in competitors, which is directly addressed by a chapter about how an investment firm achieved success by capitalizing off of the financial crisis of 2009.
I guess the part of this book that I found disappointing was that it seemed to be built upon the idea that the worst thing about silos is that they can be bad for business. The book sort of treats financial success as the ultimate end, but I would have loved to see a book that approached this issue from a more philosophical perspective.
With that said, it's still worth reading, and it can be a great "required office read" if you work at a company with a siloing problem, even if the praise for "successful silo-buster" companies seems ill-informed, premature, and perhaps even ethically unsupported by the book.
October 29, 2021
I originally thought the author had kinda cheated by sticking in a chapter about anthropology. But maybe I should read more anthropology books because that was my favorite!
Break down silos with inefficiency and an anthropologist's perspective.
"The only element that is absolutely common to all these diverse situations is that wherever and however people dance, eat, cook, arrange their space or family lives, they tend to assume that their own particular way of behaving is natural, normal, or inevitable. And they usually consider that the way that other people dance, and classify the world, is not. This variety illustrates a simple but crucially important point: the patterns that we use to organize our lives are often a function of nurture not nature. That makes them fascinating to analyze."
"Inevitably [having people swap teams/projects produced] some duplication and overlap, if not waste.... But he concluded it was a small price to pay to meet the goal of keeping the organization fluid and connected. It was crucial to have a bit of slack or inefficiency to breed creativity and give people time to stay connected."
6 Anthropologist traits that help breakdown silos
1: bottom up: micro level processes to make sense of macro
2: listen and look with open mind, interconnecting different pieces of a system
3: examine taboo/dull/boring parts of life
4: listen carefully to what people say vs what they do "obsessed with the gap between rhetoric and reality."
5: Compare many different groups/ systems, look back on ourselves with clearer eyes > insider-outsider perspective
6: celebrate that there is more than one valid way for a human to live and nothing is inevitable.
Break down silos with inefficiency and an anthropologist's perspective.
"The only element that is absolutely common to all these diverse situations is that wherever and however people dance, eat, cook, arrange their space or family lives, they tend to assume that their own particular way of behaving is natural, normal, or inevitable. And they usually consider that the way that other people dance, and classify the world, is not. This variety illustrates a simple but crucially important point: the patterns that we use to organize our lives are often a function of nurture not nature. That makes them fascinating to analyze."
"Inevitably [having people swap teams/projects produced] some duplication and overlap, if not waste.... But he concluded it was a small price to pay to meet the goal of keeping the organization fluid and connected. It was crucial to have a bit of slack or inefficiency to breed creativity and give people time to stay connected."
6 Anthropologist traits that help breakdown silos
1: bottom up: micro level processes to make sense of macro
2: listen and look with open mind, interconnecting different pieces of a system
3: examine taboo/dull/boring parts of life
4: listen carefully to what people say vs what they do "obsessed with the gap between rhetoric and reality."
5: Compare many different groups/ systems, look back on ourselves with clearer eyes > insider-outsider perspective
6: celebrate that there is more than one valid way for a human to live and nothing is inevitable.
November 27, 2022
This book is powerful. It offers some intense and destructive stories of failure. It reveals some potent case studies of success.
Silos are based on a shared classification system in an organization. They are often traditional and conservative. However, neoliberalism has tapped - hooked - into silo structures, to create 'internal markets' and the relentless search for 'efficiencies'. What Tett shows is that 'internal markets' and 'efficiencies' create the inverse result of what was required.
The book is strong. My critique is that it is too wedded to case studies, and the generalizability of these case studies is not clear. The conclusion is excellent, if brief.
Silos are based on a shared classification system in an organization. They are often traditional and conservative. However, neoliberalism has tapped - hooked - into silo structures, to create 'internal markets' and the relentless search for 'efficiencies'. What Tett shows is that 'internal markets' and 'efficiencies' create the inverse result of what was required.
The book is strong. My critique is that it is too wedded to case studies, and the generalizability of these case studies is not clear. The conclusion is excellent, if brief.
July 2, 2019
A great book, if a bit focussed on silos in the financial world. It’s frightening how, even as experts, our classification of the world around us can cause a blindness to both risks and opportunities as the boundaries become rigid and impenetrable. The book highlights how looking through the anthropologist’s lens may help us spot where we are becoming blind creatures of habit and help us jump the boundaries between the silos we create that carry so much risk.
June 2, 2018
Short and concise. Learnt a lot from the book.
This book is neatly divided into 2 parts: the first 3 chapters contains stories about how internal Silos at 3 organizations lead to negative consequences. The second part includes 3 examples of how individuals and organizations managed to break silos and reap rewards.
Each story in the book is centered around a few chosen individuals. This keeps the stories engaging.
This is a must read book for anyone interested in understanding how a company's culture can make or break it's fortunes.
This book is neatly divided into 2 parts: the first 3 chapters contains stories about how internal Silos at 3 organizations lead to negative consequences. The second part includes 3 examples of how individuals and organizations managed to break silos and reap rewards.
Each story in the book is centered around a few chosen individuals. This keeps the stories engaging.
This is a must read book for anyone interested in understanding how a company's culture can make or break it's fortunes.
May 22, 2018
Brilliant, insightful, provocative, Gillian Tett has written an essential read. Her book about credit derivatives, Fool's Gold, was epic, but this book turns conventional business practices upside down. Silos are great if you are storing grain but not if you want to build a prosperous, sustainable business. Gillian is a trained anthropologist with an advanced degree. She manages to slip in relevant examples that highlight the topic. Tribalism, turf battles, intramurals, civil wars, insurrections, CYA, corporate politics ... whatever you call it, it's a cancer. Gillian deftly writes the obits on companies who failed to get this and shares best practices from others that survived and prospered. Definitely worth a look.
May 22, 2022
Good book from FT journalist about work culture
May 30, 2017
Gillian Tett applies Pierre Bourdieu's theories of cultural reproduction and habitus to large organizations, both government and industry. This provides a rather unique accounting of why large organizations are prone to become inward looking, why this leads to a refusal to acknowledge other fields (another Bourdieu term), and how this can be damaging.
Tett accepts that the division of labor and specialization is necessary and efficient, but is aware of the dangers this poses to communication and collaboration. Using UBS as an example, Tett notes "risk officers working in three different departments tracking three different types of risk (credit, market, and operational), and these departments seldom spoke with each other" (98). UBS's classification systems considered CDOs as AAA assets rather than moderately risky mortgages. When reviewing exposure, the AAA ranking was accepted and the bank did not have an accurate idea of the risk that they had taken on (98-9). This leads the bank to incurring huge losses, and an eventual government bailout. These classification schemes, whether they're used to arrange information or work, are the essence of the Silo Effect. The story is repeated in the chapters on Sony, the Chicago Police Department, New York City Hall, and others. And there are examples of organizations attempts to knock down silos such as Facebook and the Cleveland Clinic.
While I admire Tett's idea, ultimately the book is too short with too many examples to allow a rigorous Bourdieusian analysis. This would have required, to use Sony as an example, locating the company in postwar Japan, noting the unique opportunities for business and upward mobility provided within this sociohistorical context, examinating of Japanese business culture, cataloging the rise of Japan Inc and the post-eighties economic downturn, referencing the rapid technological growth happening around the world, interviewing key stakeholders other than Kevin Stringer...
Nonetheless the book is a pleasant enough read, with informative and amusing anecdotes.
Tett accepts that the division of labor and specialization is necessary and efficient, but is aware of the dangers this poses to communication and collaboration. Using UBS as an example, Tett notes "risk officers working in three different departments tracking three different types of risk (credit, market, and operational), and these departments seldom spoke with each other" (98). UBS's classification systems considered CDOs as AAA assets rather than moderately risky mortgages. When reviewing exposure, the AAA ranking was accepted and the bank did not have an accurate idea of the risk that they had taken on (98-9). This leads the bank to incurring huge losses, and an eventual government bailout. These classification schemes, whether they're used to arrange information or work, are the essence of the Silo Effect. The story is repeated in the chapters on Sony, the Chicago Police Department, New York City Hall, and others. And there are examples of organizations attempts to knock down silos such as Facebook and the Cleveland Clinic.
While I admire Tett's idea, ultimately the book is too short with too many examples to allow a rigorous Bourdieusian analysis. This would have required, to use Sony as an example, locating the company in postwar Japan, noting the unique opportunities for business and upward mobility provided within this sociohistorical context, examinating of Japanese business culture, cataloging the rise of Japan Inc and the post-eighties economic downturn, referencing the rapid technological growth happening around the world, interviewing key stakeholders other than Kevin Stringer...
Nonetheless the book is a pleasant enough read, with informative and amusing anecdotes.
June 29, 2017
The author has methodically and in detail presented the case studies. Touched on fundamentals of what silos mean, how they are created and how they can be busted. She has correctly pointed out the similarities between the different case studies in the book. And has done a good job of citing one case study in another where it makes sense to form a linkage. In other words, the case study wasn't silo-ed!
The book presents intellectual perspective of how silos are formed and some advice, supported by case study, on how these silos can be busted - break the artificial boundaries, form insider-outsider perspective, create deliberate collisions, pay and create incentives, share data & information, create a culture to interpret the information with the same understanding, organize business structure based on the customer needs rather than sheer business ideas.
I liked the author's approach of looking at the problem from different angles and recommending possible solutions deriving an awareness from varied situations. Bold encouragement of not succumbing to the problems of silos even if silos are needed for the functioning.
The author has created an intensity in the case studies by detailed information and explanations. Depending on readers interest, these cases studies could be lengthy or enjoyable. The case studies are valuable though.
The book presents intellectual perspective of how silos are formed and some advice, supported by case study, on how these silos can be busted - break the artificial boundaries, form insider-outsider perspective, create deliberate collisions, pay and create incentives, share data & information, create a culture to interpret the information with the same understanding, organize business structure based on the customer needs rather than sheer business ideas.
I liked the author's approach of looking at the problem from different angles and recommending possible solutions deriving an awareness from varied situations. Bold encouragement of not succumbing to the problems of silos even if silos are needed for the functioning.
The author has created an intensity in the case studies by detailed information and explanations. Depending on readers interest, these cases studies could be lengthy or enjoyable. The case studies are valuable though.
September 2, 2017
This book comprises a series of highly readable case studies of systems and corporate governances which went wrong and how they came to be fixed. Avoiding the trap of writing a management theory tome, Gillian homes in on the key people involved in each situation, how they came to be there, how they tackled their problems and how they led their organisations out of the messes they were in. From the failures of the Chicago Police Department to the ultimately failed introduction of the Sony Walkman, Gillian has produced an analysis of complexity that is highly readable and understandable as to why things go wrong and how people put them right.
Expertise in analysing complex systems and their successes or failures is not just a matter of knowing management theory. In Gillian's case, as an anthropologist first and financial journalist second, she may not even describe herself as expert in management theory. But this only demonstrates that all management systems and their failures and successes fundamentally originate from human behaviour and her analyses are both perceptive and highly readable. Well worth it!
Expertise in analysing complex systems and their successes or failures is not just a matter of knowing management theory. In Gillian's case, as an anthropologist first and financial journalist second, she may not even describe herself as expert in management theory. But this only demonstrates that all management systems and their failures and successes fundamentally originate from human behaviour and her analyses are both perceptive and highly readable. Well worth it!
February 7, 2018
Case studies in leadership by Sony, Apple, UBS, 2008 financial crisis, Chicago police statistical analysis, Facebook, hospitals.
Bigger the company, more silos you'll get. Marketing promises impossible, finance reports crazy results, engineering tries to survive fighting bugs and operations is drowning in tech dept. And nobody has time or will to listen anybody else. Need to defend themselves.
One of the characteristics of industrial age enterprises is that they are organized around functional departments. This organizational structure results in both limited information and restricted thinking.
Why, as psychologist Daniel Kahneman put it, are we sometimes so “blind to our own blindness”?
This book doesn't offer solutions, but provides examples to recognize our blindness and one can hope it is the first step to fix the org.
I hope some manager doesn't read this book as a justification for the dreaded introvert productivity killing "open office". Or a justification to do more reorgs because that's what managers in a big company "do".
Bigger the company, more silos you'll get. Marketing promises impossible, finance reports crazy results, engineering tries to survive fighting bugs and operations is drowning in tech dept. And nobody has time or will to listen anybody else. Need to defend themselves.
One of the characteristics of industrial age enterprises is that they are organized around functional departments. This organizational structure results in both limited information and restricted thinking.
Why, as psychologist Daniel Kahneman put it, are we sometimes so “blind to our own blindness”?
This book doesn't offer solutions, but provides examples to recognize our blindness and one can hope it is the first step to fix the org.
I hope some manager doesn't read this book as a justification for the dreaded introvert productivity killing "open office". Or a justification to do more reorgs because that's what managers in a big company "do".
October 9, 2017
A thoughtful look at how organizations miss what might be obvious to an outsider. It is similar to the curse of knowledge in that once we "know" something, it's hard to remember what is was like to not know it.
Tett writes from the perspective of anthropology and so instead of the curse of knowledge, it is more like the curse of classification. Once we've classified something one way, it is hard to envision it any other way. Thus, we have the silo effect.
She highlights stories of organizations that got it wrong (Sony) and those that are trying to get it right (Facebook, some local governments).
Well worth the read. It would be great to get a follow-up that makes some more practical suggestions on how an organization can pursue breaking up silo thinking on a day-to-day basis.
Tett writes from the perspective of anthropology and so instead of the curse of knowledge, it is more like the curse of classification. Once we've classified something one way, it is hard to envision it any other way. Thus, we have the silo effect.
She highlights stories of organizations that got it wrong (Sony) and those that are trying to get it right (Facebook, some local governments).
Well worth the read. It would be great to get a follow-up that makes some more practical suggestions on how an organization can pursue breaking up silo thinking on a day-to-day basis.
December 23, 2017
Gillian uses her anthropologist's experience to study and understand the origin of what she calls the silo effect, and how they break down communications between business units, causing them to miss risks, opportunities and innovations. She argues that it sometimes takes a person from a different background to make fresh changes to existing classifications, an inside-outsider. This is a good objective look at how we should increase interaction between teams that should be collaborating, and not defending their tribal turf within the same company. Recommended for business leaders.
August 29, 2017
Not what I expected: The book is an overview of existant models of silos within businesses such as Sony, Microsoft and UBD. I expected the book to offer "solo busting techniques" as the author calls it, but she simply listed series of failed business models. Half way through the book I got tired of reading this book as it felt more of an analysis rather than providing readers with thought provoking ideas.
December 19, 2017
Good read about humans use compartmentalization to make sense of a complicated world but also show how that compartmentalization can lead to physical, social, mental, economic isolation. Several case studies are shown including the 2008 financial crisis as one example of the entire system thinking everyone else was doing the monitoring when in fact no one was. All in all a good read if you want to see where great companies succeed and where once great companies fail.
July 31, 2017
A collection of case studies wherein which people broke out of their silos to achieve great success. Outside of the chapter on Bourdieu and Sony, much of this was of little interest to me as it seemed more driven by a desire to push a specific position without much consideration of alternative considerations
March 21, 2018
This book was great. So much insight into the world and the worlds finanical problems - but then able to reflect these problems and solutions into silos that affect me.
The audio book was really good, different voices for the quoets really helped.
The audio book was really good, different voices for the quoets really helped.
August 2, 2020
Working In Silos
I had high expectations for this book. I read Gillian Tett’s two previous essays and posted laudatory reviews on this website. I praised the way Gillian Tett could make the most of her position as a journalist working for the Financial Times in postings overseas. On two occasions, her vantage point gave her an edge to treat significant issues at key moments in financial history. She was a foreign correspondent in Japan at the time of the post-bubble economy, when banks were loaded with non-performing loans and firms resorted to foreign managers to clean up the mess. Saving the Sun tells the story of Long Term Credit Bank, one of the nation's most respected financial institutions, and its attempts to transform itself into a Western-style bank. In the process of describing this managerial transition, Gillian Test exposed the secretive world of Japanese banking where business is done in sex bars and gangsters lurk behind the scenes. Giri and ninjo, tatemae and honne, nemawashi and gaiatsu, kisha clubs and keiretsu, shukan tabloids and yakuza: all the familiar norms and institutions of Japan made their appearance in the text, along with the historical episodes of Japan's opening to the West. The book was sensitive to cultural difference, although Anglo-Saxon capitalism largely escaped her critique of a corrupt system brought to its knees by incompetence and hubris.
Tribes, rites, and myths on Wall Street
In Fool’s Gold, she made amends for her past leniency towards Anglo-Saxon capitalism, and addressed financial corruption head-on. She had moved to a new posting at the heart of the financial system, covering credit markets in Wall Street, when the 2008 financial crisis hit and new terms like CDO or CDS that even most banking specialists viewed as obscure suddenly made headlines. Gillian Tett’s position as a financial reporter gave her access to key people and prominent insiders, but she didn’t become a mouthpiece for the financial elite. She kept her independent spirit, keen eye, and sharp pen to describe the tribes, rites, and myths of Wall Street in a way a distant onlooker would analyze a foreign culture. The rites she observed were those of the banking tribe and particularly the inner workings of a small group of financial innovators at J.P.Morgan. These included wild parties at Boca Raton, Florida, professional jamborees in Europe, academic conferences at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, emergency meetings at the Fed headquarters in New York, and weekends at the Hamptons. For these new finance whiz kids, coming of age at J.P.Morgan involved "cracking" the credit derivative puzzle and developing it into a mass market, before the creature rebelled against its masters and drew the financial world into Armageddon. The myth that the Wall Street tribe endorsed was that credit derivatives would allow banks to trade away the risk of default involved in any loan, and that the market would always self-discipline itself.
In the author’s foreword and in the media reactions to her two books, mention was often made of Gillian Tett’s major when she was a student at Cambridge. She did a PhD in Social Anthropology, and as part of her academic work she conducted fieldwork in Central Asia, studying marriage rituals and ethnic identity in former Soviet Union’s Tajikistan. This biographical detail might have caused some sort of discomfort or put her at variance with her co-workers and contacts in the financial world, who were more likely to hold MBAs or science degrees. It is indeed quite uncommon to see an anthropologist pitch tent in Wall Street and observe natives wearing pinstripe suits (but not unprecedented: see Karen Ho’s Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street.) But again, there was nothing to be ashamed of. After all, it is very common in the United Kingdom to see young graduates with a humanities’ degree from a top university move to management positions in business and finance. A liberal arts education can increase the employability of students by endowing them with social skills and a relational network. It expands the capacity of the mind to think critically and analyze information effectively. Especially for a journalist, being able to tell a story and to build a rapport with key informants are more important than past degrees and curricula. For Gillian Tett, having studied anthropology and being a woman in a male-dominated world was not really a challenge: it just added more diversity to the mix.
In praise of anthropology
The Silo Effect differs from Gillian Tett’s two previous books. Instead of mentioning her PhD education just in passing, she brings it to the fore, and makes it a central thesis in her argument. As she puts it, “studying anthropology tends to change the way you look at the world.” Anthropologists focus on watching real life and dealing with real issues, as opposed to developing abstract theories or playing with philosophical concepts. Indeed, many chose the discipline because they were trying to get out of philosophy. They practice fieldwork or participant observation, becoming somehow insiders without completely fitting in. As Gillian Tett reflects, “anyone who has been immersed in anthropology is doomed to be an insider-outsider for the rest of their life.” She puts a lot of biographical details in her book: how she spent months in a remote mountainous village in Soviet Tajikistan, wearing ethnic clothes and sharing the lives of families and communities; why she decided to quit academia as she became frustrated with the heavy atmosphere of university departments; how she seized the opportunity to move into journalism as she felt writing stories was like “the anthropological equivalent of being on a speed date”; and how she started to connect the dots as she discovered most of the stories she wrote about were about the consequences of working in silos. For her, “silos are cultural phenomena which arise out of the systems we use to classify and organize the world.” And as scientists focusing on cultural categories and social classifications, anthropologists are best equipped to see the limits of tunnel vision, tribalism and groupthink that give rise to the “silo effect”.
Gillian Tett addresses readers who are unlikely to be familiar with anthropology as an academic field, and she spends many pages telling the history of the discipline and the travails of some of its key figures such as Bronislaw Malinowski and Pierre Bourdieu. But—and this is my first contention with the book—she does it in a highly distorted and unsatisfactory manner. Her presentation of the discipline is a caricature that even first-year students would reject as lame. She accumulates factual errors, misspellings, and oversimplifications—both in the text and in the endnotes. Her dumbed-down account of Bourdieu’s sociology doesn’t mention domination or symbolic violence, which is like taking exploitation and class struggle out of Karl Marx. Bourdieu’s texts are not always easy to read. He has a reputation for writing in circumlocuted prose, redefining concepts by giving them a new meaning, and arguing with other authors without mentioning them in the text or endnotes. But his thinking can be made plain and accessible: indeed, it is taught to high school students in France as an introduction to sociology. If French teenagers can “get it”, I see no reason why Gillian Tett’s readers should be denied a more fleshed-up and authentic version of Bourdieu’s brand of sociology. The same holds true for the discipline of anthropology, or for social theory in general. It cannot be reduced to a “look from afar”, an “insider-outsider” perspective, or the deconstruction of social categories and mental maps.
Severe limitations
The Silo Effect takes its examples from various episodes that Gillian Tett covered as a journalist: the “skunkworks” established to connect databases at New York’s City Hall or Chicago’s Police Department, the fate of UBS or the Bank of England as they faced the 2008 financial meltdown, management transition from Nobuyuki Idei to Howard Stinger at Sony, etc. You don’t need to know anything about economics or finance or management to read and appreciate this book, although familiarity with the issues covered will help you get a deeper understanding. But here’s the catch: most readers of Gillian Tett’s book are likely to be literate in these fields—as Financial Times’ subscribers, business school graduates, or corporate executives. They are able to fill the blanks and get the message that is delivered in plain and accessible format. The same doesn’t hold true for anthropology. It is a fringe discipline that most people working in the corridors of power completely ignore (note, however, that Barack Obama’s mother, the World Bank’s previous president, and a former president of Afghanistan were practicing anthropologists, making an anthropology journal claim that “anthropology is the worst major for your career, but the best major for taking over the world.”) Since Gillian Test had their attention, she could have done a better job in explaining the basic tenets of the discipline. But if she were a student enrolled in Anthropology 101, her essay would only get a passing grade.
Gillian Test made another mistake that is often fatal to journalists: she fell in love with her topic. Looking for management dysfunction and corporate remedies, she began to see silos everywhere. “Mastering our silos” became a self-help mantra that she applied to every kind of situations. Her can-do attitude contrasts with the professional ethos of social scientists, who usually emphasize social determinism and structural patterns of behavior. When she writes that “we can escape from the prison of the classification systems that we inherit,” she inadvertently contradicts Max Weber and his iron cage, or Emile Durkheim and collective consciousness. Social code cannot be rewritten the way a nerd tinkers with a computer software. Classification systems and taxonomies function at the level of the unconscious. A lot of work goes into making them look natural and legitimate, especially when they uphold hierarchical patterns and power structures. In praising the figure of the silo breaker and the bucket buster, Gillian Tett forgets the role of democratic politics and organized social struggles. Social categories evolve because they are contested; while the dominant group tries to maintain hegemony by imposing its norms and worldview, other groups develop alternative viewpoints and challenge the dominant perspective. Power holders claim a monopoly on the production of legitimate categories. Once that monopoly is contested, other ways to reorder the world can emerge and provide fuel for action.
Bad choice of metaphor
The last shortcoming I would like to point out is the bad choice of metaphor expressed in the title and the main thesis. According to the dictionary, a silo is a tall tower or pit on a farm used to store grain. It doesn’t relate easily to the corporate world or to the office workspace. In an age of lean organizations and flat hierarchies, it gives an image of vertical integration and top-down decision-making that is at variance with current management practices. Being treated like corn or wheat doesn’t do justice to the freewill and autonomy of agents. Like Confucius would have said, a poor choice of metaphor makes the world poorer; when words don’t corresponds to reality, humanity suffers. There are other metaphors that could have been developed. People have used words like “ghettos”, “buckets”, “tribes”, “boxes”, “stovepipes” or “blinkers”. Other expressions include “groupthink”, “tunnel vision”, “in-group bias”, “NIMBY” or “NIH” syndrome. The Japanese have a much more colorful expression: they talk of “octopus pots” or “tako tsubo”, a fishing technique that uses clay pots to catch octopuses. Sometimes a story describes a situation better than a metaphor. Gillian Tett recalls that on September 11, when emergency workers rushed to the World Trade Center, they discovered that the radios and walkie-talkies used by the fire, police, and health departments could not tune into the same communication channels. This aptly describes a world where people run in parallel lines and cannot sync with each other. If anything, anthropology can give us a richer vocabulary and a wider repertoire of stories.
I had high expectations for this book. I read Gillian Tett’s two previous essays and posted laudatory reviews on this website. I praised the way Gillian Tett could make the most of her position as a journalist working for the Financial Times in postings overseas. On two occasions, her vantage point gave her an edge to treat significant issues at key moments in financial history. She was a foreign correspondent in Japan at the time of the post-bubble economy, when banks were loaded with non-performing loans and firms resorted to foreign managers to clean up the mess. Saving the Sun tells the story of Long Term Credit Bank, one of the nation's most respected financial institutions, and its attempts to transform itself into a Western-style bank. In the process of describing this managerial transition, Gillian Test exposed the secretive world of Japanese banking where business is done in sex bars and gangsters lurk behind the scenes. Giri and ninjo, tatemae and honne, nemawashi and gaiatsu, kisha clubs and keiretsu, shukan tabloids and yakuza: all the familiar norms and institutions of Japan made their appearance in the text, along with the historical episodes of Japan's opening to the West. The book was sensitive to cultural difference, although Anglo-Saxon capitalism largely escaped her critique of a corrupt system brought to its knees by incompetence and hubris.
Tribes, rites, and myths on Wall Street
In Fool’s Gold, she made amends for her past leniency towards Anglo-Saxon capitalism, and addressed financial corruption head-on. She had moved to a new posting at the heart of the financial system, covering credit markets in Wall Street, when the 2008 financial crisis hit and new terms like CDO or CDS that even most banking specialists viewed as obscure suddenly made headlines. Gillian Tett’s position as a financial reporter gave her access to key people and prominent insiders, but she didn’t become a mouthpiece for the financial elite. She kept her independent spirit, keen eye, and sharp pen to describe the tribes, rites, and myths of Wall Street in a way a distant onlooker would analyze a foreign culture. The rites she observed were those of the banking tribe and particularly the inner workings of a small group of financial innovators at J.P.Morgan. These included wild parties at Boca Raton, Florida, professional jamborees in Europe, academic conferences at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, emergency meetings at the Fed headquarters in New York, and weekends at the Hamptons. For these new finance whiz kids, coming of age at J.P.Morgan involved "cracking" the credit derivative puzzle and developing it into a mass market, before the creature rebelled against its masters and drew the financial world into Armageddon. The myth that the Wall Street tribe endorsed was that credit derivatives would allow banks to trade away the risk of default involved in any loan, and that the market would always self-discipline itself.
In the author’s foreword and in the media reactions to her two books, mention was often made of Gillian Tett’s major when she was a student at Cambridge. She did a PhD in Social Anthropology, and as part of her academic work she conducted fieldwork in Central Asia, studying marriage rituals and ethnic identity in former Soviet Union’s Tajikistan. This biographical detail might have caused some sort of discomfort or put her at variance with her co-workers and contacts in the financial world, who were more likely to hold MBAs or science degrees. It is indeed quite uncommon to see an anthropologist pitch tent in Wall Street and observe natives wearing pinstripe suits (but not unprecedented: see Karen Ho’s Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street.) But again, there was nothing to be ashamed of. After all, it is very common in the United Kingdom to see young graduates with a humanities’ degree from a top university move to management positions in business and finance. A liberal arts education can increase the employability of students by endowing them with social skills and a relational network. It expands the capacity of the mind to think critically and analyze information effectively. Especially for a journalist, being able to tell a story and to build a rapport with key informants are more important than past degrees and curricula. For Gillian Tett, having studied anthropology and being a woman in a male-dominated world was not really a challenge: it just added more diversity to the mix.
In praise of anthropology
The Silo Effect differs from Gillian Tett’s two previous books. Instead of mentioning her PhD education just in passing, she brings it to the fore, and makes it a central thesis in her argument. As she puts it, “studying anthropology tends to change the way you look at the world.” Anthropologists focus on watching real life and dealing with real issues, as opposed to developing abstract theories or playing with philosophical concepts. Indeed, many chose the discipline because they were trying to get out of philosophy. They practice fieldwork or participant observation, becoming somehow insiders without completely fitting in. As Gillian Tett reflects, “anyone who has been immersed in anthropology is doomed to be an insider-outsider for the rest of their life.” She puts a lot of biographical details in her book: how she spent months in a remote mountainous village in Soviet Tajikistan, wearing ethnic clothes and sharing the lives of families and communities; why she decided to quit academia as she became frustrated with the heavy atmosphere of university departments; how she seized the opportunity to move into journalism as she felt writing stories was like “the anthropological equivalent of being on a speed date”; and how she started to connect the dots as she discovered most of the stories she wrote about were about the consequences of working in silos. For her, “silos are cultural phenomena which arise out of the systems we use to classify and organize the world.” And as scientists focusing on cultural categories and social classifications, anthropologists are best equipped to see the limits of tunnel vision, tribalism and groupthink that give rise to the “silo effect”.
Gillian Tett addresses readers who are unlikely to be familiar with anthropology as an academic field, and she spends many pages telling the history of the discipline and the travails of some of its key figures such as Bronislaw Malinowski and Pierre Bourdieu. But—and this is my first contention with the book—she does it in a highly distorted and unsatisfactory manner. Her presentation of the discipline is a caricature that even first-year students would reject as lame. She accumulates factual errors, misspellings, and oversimplifications—both in the text and in the endnotes. Her dumbed-down account of Bourdieu’s sociology doesn’t mention domination or symbolic violence, which is like taking exploitation and class struggle out of Karl Marx. Bourdieu’s texts are not always easy to read. He has a reputation for writing in circumlocuted prose, redefining concepts by giving them a new meaning, and arguing with other authors without mentioning them in the text or endnotes. But his thinking can be made plain and accessible: indeed, it is taught to high school students in France as an introduction to sociology. If French teenagers can “get it”, I see no reason why Gillian Tett’s readers should be denied a more fleshed-up and authentic version of Bourdieu’s brand of sociology. The same holds true for the discipline of anthropology, or for social theory in general. It cannot be reduced to a “look from afar”, an “insider-outsider” perspective, or the deconstruction of social categories and mental maps.
Severe limitations
The Silo Effect takes its examples from various episodes that Gillian Tett covered as a journalist: the “skunkworks” established to connect databases at New York’s City Hall or Chicago’s Police Department, the fate of UBS or the Bank of England as they faced the 2008 financial meltdown, management transition from Nobuyuki Idei to Howard Stinger at Sony, etc. You don’t need to know anything about economics or finance or management to read and appreciate this book, although familiarity with the issues covered will help you get a deeper understanding. But here’s the catch: most readers of Gillian Tett’s book are likely to be literate in these fields—as Financial Times’ subscribers, business school graduates, or corporate executives. They are able to fill the blanks and get the message that is delivered in plain and accessible format. The same doesn’t hold true for anthropology. It is a fringe discipline that most people working in the corridors of power completely ignore (note, however, that Barack Obama’s mother, the World Bank’s previous president, and a former president of Afghanistan were practicing anthropologists, making an anthropology journal claim that “anthropology is the worst major for your career, but the best major for taking over the world.”) Since Gillian Test had their attention, she could have done a better job in explaining the basic tenets of the discipline. But if she were a student enrolled in Anthropology 101, her essay would only get a passing grade.
Gillian Test made another mistake that is often fatal to journalists: she fell in love with her topic. Looking for management dysfunction and corporate remedies, she began to see silos everywhere. “Mastering our silos” became a self-help mantra that she applied to every kind of situations. Her can-do attitude contrasts with the professional ethos of social scientists, who usually emphasize social determinism and structural patterns of behavior. When she writes that “we can escape from the prison of the classification systems that we inherit,” she inadvertently contradicts Max Weber and his iron cage, or Emile Durkheim and collective consciousness. Social code cannot be rewritten the way a nerd tinkers with a computer software. Classification systems and taxonomies function at the level of the unconscious. A lot of work goes into making them look natural and legitimate, especially when they uphold hierarchical patterns and power structures. In praising the figure of the silo breaker and the bucket buster, Gillian Tett forgets the role of democratic politics and organized social struggles. Social categories evolve because they are contested; while the dominant group tries to maintain hegemony by imposing its norms and worldview, other groups develop alternative viewpoints and challenge the dominant perspective. Power holders claim a monopoly on the production of legitimate categories. Once that monopoly is contested, other ways to reorder the world can emerge and provide fuel for action.
Bad choice of metaphor
The last shortcoming I would like to point out is the bad choice of metaphor expressed in the title and the main thesis. According to the dictionary, a silo is a tall tower or pit on a farm used to store grain. It doesn’t relate easily to the corporate world or to the office workspace. In an age of lean organizations and flat hierarchies, it gives an image of vertical integration and top-down decision-making that is at variance with current management practices. Being treated like corn or wheat doesn’t do justice to the freewill and autonomy of agents. Like Confucius would have said, a poor choice of metaphor makes the world poorer; when words don’t corresponds to reality, humanity suffers. There are other metaphors that could have been developed. People have used words like “ghettos”, “buckets”, “tribes”, “boxes”, “stovepipes” or “blinkers”. Other expressions include “groupthink”, “tunnel vision”, “in-group bias”, “NIMBY” or “NIH” syndrome. The Japanese have a much more colorful expression: they talk of “octopus pots” or “tako tsubo”, a fishing technique that uses clay pots to catch octopuses. Sometimes a story describes a situation better than a metaphor. Gillian Tett recalls that on September 11, when emergency workers rushed to the World Trade Center, they discovered that the radios and walkie-talkies used by the fire, police, and health departments could not tune into the same communication channels. This aptly describes a world where people run in parallel lines and cannot sync with each other. If anything, anthropology can give us a richer vocabulary and a wider repertoire of stories.
August 25, 2020
The Silo Effect - Gillian Tett
"The Silo Effect" is about how silos in organizations affect how companies function, and illustrates how silos can expose companies to unnecessary risk.
The author, Gillian Tett, holds a doctorate in anthropology, and uses this background to understand why silos arise and what they mean to organizations.
One of the examples in the book is Sony, which was an almost unparalleled innovation hub. The company was organized into separate business units where each of the units was only responsible for itself and its own. Tett uses the launch of the digital walkman to illustrate how things can go awry when organisations succumb to air tight silos.
At the launch of their first digital music players, they first launched a music player the size of a pack of chewing gum ("Memory Stick Walkman"). At the same event, they also launched a music player called "Vaio MusicClip"; this the size of a slightly thick pen. To top it all off, they also launched a "Network Walkman", the size of a dictaphone.
Why Sony unveiled not one, but two different digital Walkman devices in 1999 was because it was completely fragmented: different departments of the giant Sony empire had each developed their own — different — digital music devices, with proprietary technology, known as ATRAAC3, that was not widely compatible. None of these departments, or silos, was able to agree on a single product approach, or even communicate with each other to swap ideas, or agree on a joint strategy.
Two Sony Walkman products and one Sony Vaio product that all had to compete for the same market, and which were not compatible with each other.
This is where Tett's anthropologist background comes in; she tests the claim that few (or none) of Sony's employees had even understood that 1) they were part of a rigid silo structure and 2) the consequences of such an organization.
Most of the staff who worked at Sony had never thought of the issue of silos before. They had generally grown up inside Sony, and it was the only corporate world they had ever known. To them, that the company was fragmented was unremarkable: it was a pattern so deeply ingrained that they took it for granted,
The author provides some advice and tips on how to break down silos, but also takes care to mention that “we cannot live without silos in the modern world. But we can avoid succumbing to the problems they pose. ”
There was one quote in particular that struck a chord with me, which I know several organizations could have benefited from adopting:
"One technique we teach managers here is that we insist that people use names — real names — to talk about each other," Schrep said. “If we ever catch anyone using a depersonalized moniker then you interrupt them and stop them. We never let people refer to anyone else as, say, ‘those idiots in team six’ or “‘ those stupid marketing guys, ’since it is one sign of dehumanizing a group. When you do not know who people are and depersonalize groups, then you get into problems. ”
The book is roughly 300 pages, and is prone to repetitions. The first chapter is for those who are particularly interested, where the author explains Pierre Bourdieu's theories of cultural reproduction and habitus in large organizations. The stories in the book are entertaining and make it feel easy to read. I'm a little unsure of exactly how much professional benefit it provides, beyond inspiring action and pointing out the risks of waterproof bulkheads and silos in organisations.
The book is primarily based on anecdotal evidence and is lacking in terms of scientific grounding, although its references are included for those interested.
September 2, 2023
Book of the Day – The Silo Effect
Today’s Book of the Day is THE SILO EFFECT, written by Gillian Tett in 2016 and published by Simon & Schuster.
Gillian Tett is a British author, speaker, and journalist who chairs the editorial board, US, for the Financial Times- She writes columns about finance, business, and the political economy. She has a PhD in social anthropology from Cambridge University.
I have chosen this book because I am a loyal reader of Gillian Tett‘s columns and I cited this book yesterday in a conversation about knowledge management in a large organization’s team.
In her book THE SILO EFFECT, Tett explores the phenomenon of silos in organizations and how they can lead to problems such as poor decision-making, missed opportunities, and even disasters.
Tett defines a silo as “a state of organizational isolation, where people within different departments or teams work in their own self-contained worlds, with little communication or collaboration with others“. Starting from her experience as a social anthropologist, the author argues that these silos are created by a number of social and cultural factors, mainly including:
The natural tendency of people to form groups and identify with their own tribe
The way organizations are structured, with different departments and teams responsible for different tasks
The use of jargon and technical language, which can make it difficult for people from different departments to communicate with each other
The silo effect can have a number of negative consequences for organizations. For example, it can lead to:
Poor decision-making: When people are siloed, they may not have access to all the information they need to make informed decisions. This can lead to mistakes and missed opportunities.
Missed opportunities: When people are siloed, they may not be aware of opportunities that could benefit the organization as a whole.
Reduced innovation: When people are siloed, they may not be able to share ideas and collaborate with others. This can stifle innovation.
Increased risk: When people are siloed, they may not be aware of risks that could affect the organization. This can lead to disasters.
In the book, Tett offers a number of strategies for effectively breaking down silos so to create a more collaborative and innovative culture within organizations by directly addressing the culture these silos have been created and maintained.
The strategies include creating cross-functional teams, using common language and terminology to avoid jargon and hyper-specialization, encouraging better communication and collaboration across the entire organization, and also rewarding everyone who shares ideas and takes risks.
Tett also suggests that organizations can systematically avoid the birth of new silos by:
Investing in changing the way managers and employees see the organization and their functions using training and development programs that provide guidance on how everyone contributes to the goals of the organization itself by working together.
Creating a renewed, positive culture of ownership, transparency and accountability, where everyone feels comfortable sharing knowledge, information, and skills.
Using technology to break down the barriers that limit communication and collaboration across different departments.
Tett‘s call to action is clear: the future of every successful organization lies in its ability to adapt, innovate, and leverage the diverse talents of its employees while at the same getting rid of every mindset, procedure, and behaviour that aims at creating secluded areas of knowledge and information.
In conclusion, THE SILO EFFECT is a compelling and timely read for business leaders, managers, and anyone interested in understanding the complexities of organizational dynamics so as to break down barriers and drive sustainable growth and success in their organization.
Today’s Book of the Day is THE SILO EFFECT, written by Gillian Tett in 2016 and published by Simon & Schuster.
Gillian Tett is a British author, speaker, and journalist who chairs the editorial board, US, for the Financial Times- She writes columns about finance, business, and the political economy. She has a PhD in social anthropology from Cambridge University.
I have chosen this book because I am a loyal reader of Gillian Tett‘s columns and I cited this book yesterday in a conversation about knowledge management in a large organization’s team.
In her book THE SILO EFFECT, Tett explores the phenomenon of silos in organizations and how they can lead to problems such as poor decision-making, missed opportunities, and even disasters.
Tett defines a silo as “a state of organizational isolation, where people within different departments or teams work in their own self-contained worlds, with little communication or collaboration with others“. Starting from her experience as a social anthropologist, the author argues that these silos are created by a number of social and cultural factors, mainly including:
The natural tendency of people to form groups and identify with their own tribe
The way organizations are structured, with different departments and teams responsible for different tasks
The use of jargon and technical language, which can make it difficult for people from different departments to communicate with each other
The silo effect can have a number of negative consequences for organizations. For example, it can lead to:
Poor decision-making: When people are siloed, they may not have access to all the information they need to make informed decisions. This can lead to mistakes and missed opportunities.
Missed opportunities: When people are siloed, they may not be aware of opportunities that could benefit the organization as a whole.
Reduced innovation: When people are siloed, they may not be able to share ideas and collaborate with others. This can stifle innovation.
Increased risk: When people are siloed, they may not be aware of risks that could affect the organization. This can lead to disasters.
In the book, Tett offers a number of strategies for effectively breaking down silos so to create a more collaborative and innovative culture within organizations by directly addressing the culture these silos have been created and maintained.
The strategies include creating cross-functional teams, using common language and terminology to avoid jargon and hyper-specialization, encouraging better communication and collaboration across the entire organization, and also rewarding everyone who shares ideas and takes risks.
Tett also suggests that organizations can systematically avoid the birth of new silos by:
Investing in changing the way managers and employees see the organization and their functions using training and development programs that provide guidance on how everyone contributes to the goals of the organization itself by working together.
Creating a renewed, positive culture of ownership, transparency and accountability, where everyone feels comfortable sharing knowledge, information, and skills.
Using technology to break down the barriers that limit communication and collaboration across different departments.
Tett‘s call to action is clear: the future of every successful organization lies in its ability to adapt, innovate, and leverage the diverse talents of its employees while at the same getting rid of every mindset, procedure, and behaviour that aims at creating secluded areas of knowledge and information.
In conclusion, THE SILO EFFECT is a compelling and timely read for business leaders, managers, and anyone interested in understanding the complexities of organizational dynamics so as to break down barriers and drive sustainable growth and success in their organization.
December 14, 2018
I first encountered Gillian Tett in one of the many documentaries I watched on the 2008 financial crisis, after which I checked out her first book, Fool's Gold. A number of years later, I found out that she had written a second book, The Silo Effect, which I decided to give a go.
The Silo Effect is a slight departure from Tett's usual M.O. as a financial reporter. In it, she exercises her anthropology background by exploring the notion of silos: these tightly-knit, very closed groups of individuals that tend to be very rigid and isolated in their thinking. While on one hand, having silos can be useful (and in many cases, almost necessary), there are many dangers lurking within them. In this book, Tett introduces the reader to some of the dangers that can arise from silos, and then walks through some strategies for sidestepping those dangers by 'busting' the silos.
The first part of the book looks at a variety of areas in which silos can crop up through the use of case studies. Tett takes an in-depth look at the business world (Sony), the banking industry (UBS), and the academic world (economists) and highlights the various dangers that silos can bring; namely the inability to bring together information at a micro level in order to get an accurate picture at the macro level. The second half of the book then looks at a different set of case studies in order to highlight some of the strategies that individuals and companies can use to break down the boundaries that are put up by silos and encourage collaboration as well as the flexibility to question the way we classify the world around us.
Tett's book strongly resonated with me. Silos are definitely a concept that I had seen and experienced before, but never something that I gave much thought; they always seemed to be an inevitability of groups that grow to a certain size. However, The Silo Effect really opened my eyes to the calamities that await when you let silos become too entrenched. I really liked the techniques she highlighted in the second half of the book because they meshed well with techniques I had read in other books (e.g.—the notion of "cultural translators" very much reminded me of a similar idea Tim Harford outlined in Messy). I've also always very much been in love with the idea of innovation through collaboration of different teams ever since I read Frans Johansson's The Medici Effect.
Overall, I think The Silo Effect has a number of important lessons for everyone; not just people in charge of large teams or corporations, but also for individuals as well. The idea of not allowing our viewpoints to calcify, but to retain an open mind and try to see the world in a different way is incredibly valuable. I highly recommend adding this book to your reading list.
The Silo Effect is a slight departure from Tett's usual M.O. as a financial reporter. In it, she exercises her anthropology background by exploring the notion of silos: these tightly-knit, very closed groups of individuals that tend to be very rigid and isolated in their thinking. While on one hand, having silos can be useful (and in many cases, almost necessary), there are many dangers lurking within them. In this book, Tett introduces the reader to some of the dangers that can arise from silos, and then walks through some strategies for sidestepping those dangers by 'busting' the silos.
The first part of the book looks at a variety of areas in which silos can crop up through the use of case studies. Tett takes an in-depth look at the business world (Sony), the banking industry (UBS), and the academic world (economists) and highlights the various dangers that silos can bring; namely the inability to bring together information at a micro level in order to get an accurate picture at the macro level. The second half of the book then looks at a different set of case studies in order to highlight some of the strategies that individuals and companies can use to break down the boundaries that are put up by silos and encourage collaboration as well as the flexibility to question the way we classify the world around us.
Tett's book strongly resonated with me. Silos are definitely a concept that I had seen and experienced before, but never something that I gave much thought; they always seemed to be an inevitability of groups that grow to a certain size. However, The Silo Effect really opened my eyes to the calamities that await when you let silos become too entrenched. I really liked the techniques she highlighted in the second half of the book because they meshed well with techniques I had read in other books (e.g.—the notion of "cultural translators" very much reminded me of a similar idea Tim Harford outlined in Messy). I've also always very much been in love with the idea of innovation through collaboration of different teams ever since I read Frans Johansson's The Medici Effect.
Overall, I think The Silo Effect has a number of important lessons for everyone; not just people in charge of large teams or corporations, but also for individuals as well. The idea of not allowing our viewpoints to calcify, but to retain an open mind and try to see the world in a different way is incredibly valuable. I highly recommend adding this book to your reading list.
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