How to build silos and decrease collaboration (on purpose)

6 months ago

Leaders often view silos as bad and collaboration as good, but this manifesto argues the opposite.
Maximize collaboration within teams to enhance shared understanding, focus, innovation, and resilience.
Minimize collaboration between teams to reduce dependencies and communication overload, ensuring scalability.
Silos exist due to human cognitive and communication limits, not as flaws but as necessary structures.
Leaders advocate breaking down silos when coordination fails, but this approach lacks specificity and system-level thinking.
Distinguish between coordination, communication, and collaboration to address organizational challenges effectively.
Effective coordination involves centralized objectives with decentralized execution, mirroring military strategies.
Improve communication by assessing information needs and designing lightweight, efficient information flows.
Collaboration between teams often indicates poor structure; teams should ideally operate independently.
Technical analogy: Silos are like encapsulation in programming; breaking them requires thoughtful restructuring, not just removal.

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