Silos: the 6th email
My Dear Niece Snakeash,
Do you wish to play a game? Perhaps thermal nuclear war? If so, prepare your…ahem…silos.
In the modern workplace, you will hear many recycled words and phrases. Much like the twits repeating their verbal diarrhea, the words and phrases are meaningless and impotent.
Some of these words are just verbal tics managers and executives nervously spit out when awaiting their next ingestion of a stimulant or other mood-altering product.
We still delve into detail in other emails with many of these examples. Still, words and phrases such as ‘transparency,’ ‘commitment to excellence,’ and ‘integrity’ coarse freely through cubicles and workspaces across the Overlands; you would think they each were a brand or delivery mechanism of cheap, mass-produced, and highly addictive coffee.
Silos is one such and similarly addicting concept.
Typically heard in expressions or admonishments such as ‘we need to stop working in silos,’ ‘we are too siloed,’ or ‘Jerry, quick.! Betty fell in the silo again.
Silos are used to convey the idea of organizational isolation and ineffectiveness.
What’s NOT often conveyed is that they who admonish you for working in the silo are the same they who created the silos.
It’s quite simple.
Silos exist because we prefer to be isolated from other co-workers, departments, or functions. After all, we can better dictate our own actions (or inaction, to be more accurate) without others’ interference.
True, this why we are so ineffective at times. A properly functioning organization is akin to a properly functioning body—all the nobly bits and rumpled pieces working together to do something bodily and gross.
By working in concert, we could affect real change.
Say it with me, now: change is baaaaaaaaaaaaaaad. Good sheep, have some grasssssssssssssssssssssssss.
Aunt Toutlips
And that’s why we don’t want that.
Working together, therefore means change. And change means renewed, increased, or even (gasp!) reasonable expectations of success.
Disregarding all that blather, and persisting instead in silos gives us exactly what we all crave: listlessness, aimlessness, and overall inoffensive nothingness.
Therefore, let us prop up the lowly silo. Let us pierce the heavens with our towers of isolation and buttresses of stoutness. We know we won’t want to work well with others—and WE LOVE IT.
And therefore, Your Employee should, as well.
Much loathing,
Aunt Toutlips