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It was not only the co-heads who operated in silos. Silos, as anyone who has worked in financial services will know, are endemic. They are no regrettable externality of a modern organisation, but a ''fundamental ideological choice'' that it makes. “[[Downskilling]]” and specialisation — and by “specialisation” I mean “atomising a process into a myriad of functions so limited in scope that they can be carried out by ''non'' specialists, following a [[playbook]]” — is no accident, but precisely what our [[modernist]], [[reductionist]], data-obsessed times demand. Not an accident, but ''one waiting to happen''. | It was not only the co-heads who operated in silos. Silos, as anyone who has worked in financial services will know, are endemic. They are no regrettable externality of a modern organisation, but a ''fundamental ideological choice'' that it makes. “[[Downskilling]]” and specialisation — and by “specialisation” I mean “atomising a process into a myriad of functions so limited in scope that they can be carried out by ''non'' specialists, following a [[playbook]]” — is no accident, but precisely what our [[modernist]], [[reductionist]], data-obsessed times demand. Not an accident, but ''one waiting to happen''. | ||
Silos also give everyone grand pooh-bah titles and diffused responsibility. Co-heads of ''anything'' is either a failure of nerve (the case here) or a Spartan fight to the death to [[Aus der Kriegsschule des Lebens|see who is strongest]] (the [[Goldman]] approach), but the more practical point is that, | Silos also give everyone grand pooh-bah titles and diffused responsibility. Co-heads of ''anything'' is either a failure of nerve (the case here) or a Spartan fight to the death to [[Aus der Kriegsschule des Lebens|see who is strongest]] (the [[Goldman]] approach), but the more practical point is that, {{shitfan}}, it is not co-grand-pooh-bahs you want directing the traffic — far better to lock them in a dark cupboard, actually — but [[subject matter expert]]s with time to think and space to act who can figure out what has happened, what needs to happen, and how best to make it happen. | ||
Silos are kryptonite to subject matter experts: there is a [[reverse-emergence]] problem here though. If you diffuse one [[subject matter expert]]’s skills among five [[school-leavers from Bucharest]], you ''lose'' something: you trade a somewhat expensive ''capacity for a small amount of magic'' for a whole lot of cheap faffing around: lateral escalation.' misunderstanding; confusion . If you cut open the golden goose, you do not get the egg. | Silos are kryptonite to subject matter experts: there is a [[reverse-emergence]] problem here though. If you diffuse one [[subject matter expert]]’s skills among five [[school-leavers from Bucharest]], you ''lose'' something: you trade a somewhat expensive ''capacity for a small amount of magic'' for a whole lot of cheap faffing around: lateral escalation.' misunderstanding; confusion . If you cut open the golden goose, you do not get the egg. |