Good Silos and Bad Silos
Can there be good silos and bad silos?
This is part 3 of my series, “Globalization Motivation,” where my goal is to oversimplify in order to evangelize localization, globalization, and above all, collaboration.
You have heard me talk about how evil silos are and how much I hate them. When you work in a silo, you are doomed to repeat mistakes that others are making, miss out on best practices that may benefit you and grow resentful of others around you by making assumptions that are most often wrong.
So, how can something this horrible be useful? Well, think of a silo as a community. This is a place where everyone speaks the same language, likes the same things, and thinks the same way. A safe place where everyone understands you. An example of a good silo might be the neighborhood where you grew up, your place of worship, a volunteer organization, a Facebook group, or a sports team. You are understood, have a united goal, and support one another. That sounds like a pretty great place to me.
A few years ago, I would not have said that. I was steadfastly against silos. While I understood their purpose, I still thought that you should do everything in your power to break through them. In the workplace, silos are unproductive places where creativity simply cannot flourish. I’ve recently changed my tune.
Scott Abel, The Content Wrangler, asked me during our webinar a few years back, if I thought any silos were good? I was adamant that no silos were beneficial. This is why I have changed my tune.
A major shift in communication has been happening in recent years. I call it the “Age of Transparency.” Communication is evolving due to the internet and primarily social media. On social platforms, there is the ability to filter out people you don’t agree with, express your anger and frustrations, and receive additional information from algorithms programmed to track your behavior. This is the very definition of a silo. Conversely, you have the ability to connect with people all over the world and receive endless information on almost any subject. Victims have used this as a platform to express their experiences, companies connect with future customers, even revolutions and revolts have been organized over it. That certainly breaks the silo.
There may be dangers to the algorithms used in social media, but so much awareness has been drawn to this. It seems every day we learn about a new word that is insulting to someone. Take “tribe” for example. Normally a word used to inspire community is being weeded out of our lexicon in the United States due to greater awareness from the Native indigenous groups. Many would say, if we comply with this request, we are being too politically correct or that people are too sensitive. I disagree. The Native community finally has a platform to speak from and that can be seen in the last election, where more people representing this community have come out to vote than ever before.
Individuals depend on communities, wherever they may exist, and social media is a great place to mine for them. Shared interests, shared experiences, and shared trauma can all be found via these platforms. You don’t have to be alone and when we stand together, we gain strength in numbers and our collective voice is louder than our own.
#METOO has been extremely powerful. This hashtag led an entire movement where shared pain has been informing the world. A voice and a shared sense of community was given to so many who were silently living with their pain.
The other side of this coin has been the term “cancel culture”. This is actually a misnomer. People are not cancelling anything. It is the prerogative of an individual company to fire an employee or cancel their subscription. There is, however, a court of public opinion. Humans share their opinions and biases and a company may be swayed to cancel/fire someone based on the fear of the impact on sales.
I speak to many individuals who are thrown off of social media platforms for something that seemed innocuous. They may take it personally or have a laugh over it. I poked fun at a friend of mine for being thrown off of a TV show fan page by creating T-shirts with the sentiment to free her from “Facebook Jail.” She really didn’t mean any harm by her innocuous post, but it was picked up by an algorithm. It’s silly to think that there are people from these platforms are actually reading through every post. Posts are flagged by code written to protect other people from possible abuse. There is no feeling, animosity, or anything personal involved. The code will constantly be updated depending on user behavior.
An important distinction needs to be made between “Customer” versus “User”. These two terms are not synonymous. A customer pays money for goods or a service and a user may utilize a product or a service but may not be the actual customer. When you are blocked from a free tool, you are not the customer, you really do not have a leg to stand on. That said, there are people who do mean harm. Those are the culprits that the artificial intelligence is designed to detect. However, do not be confused into thinking you are a customer when you are not. If you are a user of free products, you are not a customer. The customers are the users who advertise, buy data, or upgrade to premium services. This is an important distinction, especially when looking at cancel culture.
This transparency that we are experiencing is directly evolving how we communicate. It’s forcing conversations that have been avoided for decades - the difficult and painful conversations that are too uncomfortable. Previously, we might have been too embarrassed or afraid of retribution. Social media provides a platform, sometimes anonymous, where we finally have the courage to speak our minds and then find kindred spirts to create a safe silo. These topics have been bubbling inside of individuals for some time and they were eventually going to come to the surface. Unfortunately, as we have recently seen, dangerous people have been promoting hate online and it is further polarizing people and spreading false information.
Anyone can post anything. Journalism has been changed forever. At times, it can be difficult to determine a news source from ill intent and falsehoods. The transparency factor is that the truth IS there. We connect to what we believe via the trust we have in our silos .
So, what does this new normal have to do with globalization and the professional world? Everything! Brands utilize social media outlets to find customers with shared interests, aka silos. Silos can be isolating as well. If we don’t ever leave our silos, we are blind to what we have in common with others and we risk falling for lies and misinformation. Embrace your silos while educating yourself through others. Have an open mind, but ultimately, you will have to trust your gut and find what you determine to be trusted resources. Humans are being thrown a lot of information every day, and at times it is difficult to see wisdom through the nonsense and mal intent. As a brand, you too, want to be a trusted resource and therefore a safe silo.