Canadian Government Executive - Volume 21 - Issue 9

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November 2015 // Canadian Government Executive / 29
you cannot combat silos simply by opening the data spigot and
letting information spill out. What is equally important is to cre-
ate a culture that enables everyone to interpret information, and
let different interpretations be heard. This is not easy to do when
there are teams of experts who use complex technical information
that only they understand, or when they refuse to listen to alterna-
tive ideas,” she says.
This touches on her starting point, the financial crisis, where she
looked at Britain’s financial cadre and saw how “skilled experts
can become so confident in their own ideas that they end up miss-
ing dangers hidden in plain sight.” Their mental maps, in academe
or in policymaking at central banks and government ministries,
kept them securely ignorant of growing risks outside those mental
silos.
During the first two centuries of the Bank of England’s exis-
tence, money, society and politics were entwined. New recruits
were expected to be flexible and gain a holistic view of how mon-
ey moved around the economy. But economics over time became
preoccupied with mathematical models and became distanced
from financial experts looking at markets. The different silos con-
tributed to the inability to piece together what was happening in
the shadowy banking world.
A former Bank of England official told her that cultural transla-
tors are needed to move between specialist silos and explain to
those sitting inside one department what is happening elsewhere.
Not everyone must be a cultural translator but perhaps 10 per cent
of the staff must play that role. With that, we all need to periodi-
cally reimagine the taxonomies we use to organize the world, and
move beyond the commonly accepted classification of our silo.
Overcoming silos, she warns, is not a task we ever complete. It is
always a work in progress. So get started. Her book is not a guide-
book, simply an interesting collection of stories assembled by a
skilled journalist of how some organizations are dealing with silos
to help you ponder the difficulties and possibilities.
night brainstorming session — in which somebody came up with
an interactive map to help the public find their car if it was towed
away by the traffic police.
Those are both examples of using data to bust silos, and while
they may seem like limited triumphs, the reality is that informa-
tion is crucial to government — and databases are not talking
to each other. Breaking the barriers can provide results. But the
book’s many other non-government stories also offer ideas to tran-
scend tribalism and tunnel vision in organizations.
Facebook, wary of becoming as siloed as Microsoft, has intro-
duced various countervailing policies. The company brings new
recruits together for a six-week induction course known as “Boot-
camp,” which exposes them to various sides of the organization.
They aren’t allowed to choose which team to join until the end
of that stint. Tech companies love holding Hackathons to solve
problems, but a special feature at Facebook is mingling people
from different parts of the company in those challenges. And af-
ter someone has been working on the same issue for a year to 18
months, Facebook will rotate them out for a few months to get a
broader experience; most people choosing something far different
from their current work.
The company’s top two executives work in an open-plan space,
visible to all. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has an additional private of-
fice, but it is lined with glass and next to a walkway where employ-
ees constantly stroll. They call it “Mark’s goldfish bowl.” Walkways
have been built to encourage the company’s engineers to ramble
about, bumping into each other, and perhaps through these en-
counters break silos. And, of course, they are encouraged to use
Facebook to connect with fellow employees.
Tett says that a first step in silo busting is, like Facebook, to keep
the boundaries of teams flexible and fluid. Rotating people be-
tween different departments and creating places for social colli-
sions — in the real or virtual world — is a good idea. “People need
to be mixed together to stop them becoming inward-looking and
defensive,” she says.
Organizations also need to think about pay and incentives so
that people gain by collaborating. A third lesson she draws from
her reporting is that huge risks happen when departments hug
information to themselves. “However, it should be stressed that
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