Conference Presentation, Fireside Chat, Interview
The Silo Effect: The Peril of Expertise and the Promise of Breaking Down Barriers
- The Milken Institute plans to host four additional forum events within the next six weeks following the London summit and Partnering for Cures meeting.
- Attendees are anticipated to engage Gillian Tett and John Seeley-Brown via an electronic question system to facilitate a richer discussion, with Barnes & Noble expecting to process book sales immediately after the session and facilitate book signings at a dedicated stand.
- Gillian Tett predicts that post-2008 financial crisis recognition will highlight that cultural patterns and unspoken social rules are as critical as numerical data, noting that fragmentation and tribalism in banks were missing pieces in that crisis.
- Tett anticipates the world has shifted to a new "game plan" for the 21st century requiring new categories, while observing that companies capable of jumping across boundaries and rethinking classification systems, such as Blue Mountain Capital, will likely be the most innovative.
- Tett expects that the Cleveland Clinic's reorganization around body parts and ailments will yield interesting results despite the difficulty, serving as an example of how institutions can turn mental maps upside down to overcome silos.
- Tett predicts that the "Dunbar number" theory explains Facebook's need for a break-out plan once engineering teams breached the 150-person limit, and that companies exceeding this threshold must address emerging silos.
- John Seeley-Brown expects that physical architecture is key to breaking down silos, citing Facebook's open spaces, automatic doors, and rotating teams as mechanisms to force unplanned collisions and prevent teams from hardening into one-dimensional tribes.
- Seeley-Brown anticipates that reverse mentorship can help older generations shift their conceptual lenses by learning from younger people, and that government institutions need the energy of young techies, even if it involves a cultural shock.
- Tett anticipates that "Generation C" (Generation Customization) has led to more fragmented tribes due to technology, and that dystopian "teen literature" themes represent a protest against regimentation and siloization.
- Tett expects that physical meetings are necessary to avoid self-segregation inherent in cyber communication, as there are no shortcuts to the physicality required for true connection.
- Seeley-Brown anticipates that technological and anthropological solutions will be required to handle telecommuting and foster a sense of togetherness, noting that writing on whiteboards shoulder-to-shower possesses a magical collaborative quality.
- Tett expects that busting silos from the bottom up is difficult if leadership structures are rigid, though small teams of three or four people can still effect significant change on an organization's edge.
- Seeley-Brown notes that the story of Steve Jobs borrowing from Xerox PARC obscures the reality that Xerox understood the value but failed to execute the market channel, and that the Bloomberg data initiative succeeded because data is easier to combine than people.
- Tett predicts that streamlining education and careers could restrict the ability of young people to "roam," and suggests that replacing half of one's Twitter feed with radically different voices serves as a method of amateur anthropology to view oneself anew.