What’s the most formidable Innovation & strategy execution blocker? I’ve posed this question to senior leaders around the world. The
consensus answer is…
What is a Silo?
A silo is a tower or
pit used on a farm to store grain. The metaphor has evolved to mean a group of
people who work independently of other people and other teams. A silo speaks
its own language & culture, has its own goals methods, often disconnected
from rest of the organization.
Are silos always bad?
Not necessarily, in fact silos can help create & share profound knowledge. Silos can help build esprit de corps & mutual support in
difficult fields including technology, engineering, design, medicine, and law.
The dark side
manifests when the silo becomes cut off.
Silos are flow-killers, disabling the lifeblood of innovation: flow of
information, support, knowledge, and learning. When you have multiple
disconnected silos lead times explode, and nothing gets built. The pejorative urban
planning & development acronym BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere
Near Anything) reflects the disabling power of silos.
Why Silos?
Silos form when a
group of people develop their own language and way of working, usually based on
shared training. My late father-in-law, the great Dr. Robert Guselle, who ran
the biggest clinic in Ontario, often discussed medical silos and their deleterious
effect on patient outcomes. Patients got stuck in a patient journey, and the
longer they stayed, the more likely they were to get sicker. ‘Come in with one
thing, leave with something else.’
When I asked Bob what
causes medical silos, he said. “We spend eight or ten years together in this
isolated tube called medical school. We work insane hours under extreme stress
that few outside the medicine can begin to understand. We develop
our own language, way of thinking & way of being. We're a tribe & we
don’t trust other tribes.”
Medical silos have
become much, much deeper. In 1950, when Dr. Guselle graduated Oncology comprised
Surgery, and basic radiation- & chemotherapy. Nowadays, even sub-specialties
have evolved into deep complex silos. Cancer surgery, for example, itself comprises multiple silos including MIS, robot-assisted, laser surgery, cryosurgery, and
electrosurgery. The same phenomenon has occurred in other professions.
The great music
producer & entrepreneur, Jimmy Iovine, says ‘Kids come out of school not
knowing how to work or even how to talk to other specialties’ (see Rick Rubin’s Tetragrammaton
podcast).
How Do We Dissolve and/or Connect Silos? Stay tuned.
Best wishes,
Pascal Dennis E: pascal.dennis@leansystems.org
No comments:
Post a Comment