Some idle (and probably cynical) thoughts about silos, people and power.

(unedited thoughts on a Sunday night staring down the barrel of another upcoming Monday. Not sure where I'm going with any of this.)

I read a tweet earlier.

I've long been skeptical of discussions and modes of thinking that promote "breaking down silos", partially because lived experience has shown me the people who want the silos broken down often don't know what to do with the mess of grains and wheat that now lay on the field before them--beyond ordering the salaried digital farmhands to clean up their mess.

Whereas the 'rank and file' prefer the silos. Arguably, for them it means predictability, reliability and continuity. I haven't yet figured out what's in it for the people with such destructive tendencies.

Said another way: breaking down silos probably isn't the worst thing, but it's probably not as great as it is held up to be either. At least I haven't been convinced that it is. Yet.

Greg Satell's admonition to instead build networks logically resonated with me when I first read it many years ago. It made practical sense-to me an engineering leader who probably spends too much time reading Sartre and not enough O'Riley; the challenges to delivery shouldn't be so empirically focused with endless opinions on how to deconstruct functional establishments of work-but instead how to maximize the throughput of productivity and output from those establishments. Yet Satell's conceit, as much as it resonated with me always felt a bit incomplete. Never could figure out why.

Oliver's commentary may have given me that answer. Silos represent an inherent, almost Conwayrian simulacrum of organizational power. Power to do what? Many things, I suppose. Those reasons are worth looking for. This will probably be the next discovery after digging further into this axiom, but I think that power is important. Worth preserving in some part, reforming in others, but made more wholly democratic in favor of the operators and engineers and...you know, people doing the work.

This probably takes some power away from me as a leader.

I think I'm fine with that though.