Silo effect

The silo effect is a phrase that is currently popular in the business and organizational communities to describe a lack of communication and common goals between departments in an organization. It is the opposite of systems thinking in an organization. The silo effect gets its name from the farm silo, probably because there could be two silos right next to each other and if people were inside them they would not be able to communicate, since silos are tall, narrow buildings with no windows and are even supposed to be airtight.

Another, slightly more academic, suggestion as to the term 'silo effect' focuses on the gradual draining of the entire silo's grain from a remarkably small opining in the bottom. The homogeneous state of the entire volume of grain makes it highly susceptible to small changes as they occur further and further down. This is because gravity, although apparently 'unimportant' to a fully contained silo, suddenly shows itself to be an underlying force binding every single grain- something which becomes apparent when an 'anomaly' occurs at the bottom. Moreover, the nature of grain makes it an excellent example of a 'poorly connected' substance, prone to cascades of extreme collapse when they occur in favour of the systems overriding unified force. In this case, gravity. If the grain were more like a soapy foam, or even a gel, such a terrible collapse would be intrinsically averted, by means of the distributed multidirectional stability of its parts.

Systems thinking promotes a foaminess of collaboration, allowing for individual ideas to share the burden of the entire system. This assures excellent stability and adaptability- characteristics lacking in systems of thought which insist on homogeneity and absolute efficiency.

External links

• The silo effect in business
• The silo effect in software development