Effectiveness Dies in Darkness
Silos don't form because people are selfish. They form because information routing breaks down and self-preservation fills the vacuum. This memo names the structural conditions and the cost of leaving them intact.
The biggest bottleneck in most high-growth companies isn't talent or capital. It's the friction created by internal boundaries. When a VP cares more about their department's win than the company's mission, the whole enterprise is at risk. And the thing is, the org chart usually makes this worse, not better.
The point of failure is almost always the handoff. The place where Sales meets Ops. Where Finance meets Strategy. Where the information that one team has never quite makes it to the team that needs it.
Silos make your organization opaque. You end up flying a plane where the instruments in the cockpit don't match the reality outside. Effectiveness dies in that darkness. And it's not usually a people problem. It's a scoreboard problem. Your leaders are winning the game they're being measured on. The fix is to change what winning means.
The work rebuilds the scoreboard so leadership only wins when the whole firm wins. That sounds simple. Implementing it requires more honesty than most organizations are used to.
This memo explores dynamics associated with Silosolation.
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