I was lucky enough to see Gillian Tett in action at an IBA Conference years ago and was always struck by her clarity of style, in-depth knowledge about the subject matter and polite yet effective questioning approach. When I saw her book The Silo Effect: The Peril of Expertise and the Promise of Breaking Down Barrier I realized she has fully researched an issue that I always felt was overlooked in corporate structures, and in particular- law firms.

Here are some take-aways you might think about solving in your organisation:

• Silos as Barriers: Tett uses the metaphor of silos to describe how individuals, teams, and departments in organisations can become isolated from each other, leading to miscommunication and inefficiency.
• Consequences of Silos: Silos can cause companies or teams to miss important connections, innovations, and opportunities. They can result in poor decision-making and a lack of coordination, even in major organisations.
• The Anthropology Perspective: Tett, an anthropologist by training, applies insights from anthropology to understand how silos form as cultural and social phenomena within organisations.
• Breaking Down Silos:
  • The book offers various strategies for overcoming silos, such as promoting cross-departmental communication, creating flexible organizational structures, and fostering a culture of collaboration.
  • Leadership plays a key role in ensuring that people work across boundaries and avoid falling into narrow, specialised mindsets.
• Innovation and Collaboration: Breaking down silos is essential for fostering innovation and ensuring long-term organisational success. Cross-disciplinary collaboration leads to new ideas and solutions and certainly has a better chance of being implemented when all the stakeholders are engaged in designing the process to break down the barriers.
• Technology: In this age of rapid technical advancement, it is remarkable how few tools there are on the market to facilitate breaking down silos or internal barriers. Clearly there is a tradeoff between information overload and underload but the flow of relevant information effectively can make all the difference for teams working adjacent to each other.
• What you can do now:
  • Encourage a culture of mobility and rotation of people across different teams or departments.
  • Promote open communication and data sharing and if you are a leader, lead by example.
  • Use technology to bridge gaps between different parts of the organisation. Teams, Zoom, WhatsApp, email and a medium such as Platforum9 facilitates this.