Category Archives: Demolishing silos and building teams

Silos are dangerous. There is no early warning system to let you know something is about to be flung over the wall at you, and the walls keep the teams in isolation, which creates us against them attitudes and forms barriers to working together.

One wall that is typically very high in many organizations is the one between the teams of development and Operations. 

These teams cannot understand why there is so much conflict, and often come to the conclusion that it must be specific people that are at the root of the problem. If management is listening, then the knee jerk reaction is to dismiss the offending people and replace them with someone more suitable. This approach only provides a temporary fix. If nothing else changes, it won't be long before the same conflicts emerge and new people begin to look and act like their predecessors.

Some times ways of the past no longer serve the purpose they once did and the time comes to tear them down before they do significant damage.

© Wayne McKinnon 2010. All rights reserved.