Silos, Politics and Turf WarsEssay Preview: Silos, Politics and Turf WarsReport this essay„Silos, Politics and Turf Wars‟ relates to one of the most frustrating problems facing management today. They refer to the infighting and divisional separation prevalent in most companies. In common business parlance, silos can suck the life, energy, enthusiasm, and effort right out of a company or non-profit. What exactly is a silo? In business terms, a silo is a barrier or divider that keeps people within an organization from working with one another. One key reason for this is departmental politics within a business that turns co-workers into competitors and not in a positive sense. In some companies these take such unhealthy proportions that competitors appear friendlier and closer than colleagues!
Silos, Politics and Turf Wars is a provocative and honest look at business power dynamics in Silicon Valley and why the company is doing a great job of protecting its leaders from being left behind at times.
Silos, Politics and Turf Wars is a unique contribution from an industry driven by people rather than the needs of a business. It delves deep into the reasons for silos while providing readers with the most up-to-date facts about the business from current management, organizational dynamics, or other sources. It provides insight as to why silos exist, why the silos matter, and about the current state of Silicon Valley that’s facing change.
Silos, Politics and Turf Wars: The Case of Silicon Valley’s Most Powerful Man was published on the site of Silicon Valley Business Review, now that it is available in pdf format in the United Post Office. Read the first, and most popular, chapter here.
As a business lawyer with a strong personal interest in managing and managing organizations, I was surprised at how often I met these highly influential people. What surprised me and impressed many was how they were the ones who were able to work hard to protect our CEO in their own right. Silos, Politics and Turf Wars
Silos, Politics and Turf Wars: An Inside Story of the Silo Wars was written by Larry K. Moore.
Lorenzo S. Mello had been director of the “Silo Wars” Project, a nonprofit which helps companies fight the war on silos. It focused on silos because it was a way for local organizations to protect employees from being left behind by the silo wars. In 2007, Mello and his team began their project to defeat silos because they needed to protect the CEO and make his companies immune from the slum community.[1] The research found that Silos were critical to the “Silo Wars”(as defined by the Institute for Business Ethics as “what is described as a hostile workplace atmosphere”), but did nothing to stop the silo wars or their effects. In fact, they were the first organization to study the influence of companies like Google to protect the CEO or to give the CEO the benefit of the doubt when they needed to go where Silicon Valley was headed but then find that it wasn’t so great. They also found that silos were a key to promoting transparency in the workplace: their researchers were able to reveal much about what is happening on the inside to ensure that no silo was closed. Even in Silicon Valley, those who supported silos were often seen as bullies and could not fight back. It became their mission of not only protecting executives and other leaders but also promoting the virtues of silos as a way to build a more friendly workplace. Mello and his Project Director at this time, Kevin Dolan, wrote a book called “Silo Wars: The Inside Story of the Silo Wars”.
The “Silo Wars” Project started out
Silos, Politics and Turf Wars is a provocative and honest look at business power dynamics in Silicon Valley and why the company is doing a great job of protecting its leaders from being left behind at times.
Silos, Politics and Turf Wars is a unique contribution from an industry driven by people rather than the needs of a business. It delves deep into the reasons for silos while providing readers with the most up-to-date facts about the business from current management, organizational dynamics, or other sources. It provides insight as to why silos exist, why the silos matter, and about the current state of Silicon Valley that’s facing change.
Silos, Politics and Turf Wars: The Case of Silicon Valley’s Most Powerful Man was published on the site of Silicon Valley Business Review, now that it is available in pdf format in the United Post Office. Read the first, and most popular, chapter here.
As a business lawyer with a strong personal interest in managing and managing organizations, I was surprised at how often I met these highly influential people. What surprised me and impressed many was how they were the ones who were able to work hard to protect our CEO in their own right. Silos, Politics and Turf Wars
Silos, Politics and Turf Wars: An Inside Story of the Silo Wars was written by Larry K. Moore.
Lorenzo S. Mello had been director of the “Silo Wars” Project, a nonprofit which helps companies fight the war on silos. It focused on silos because it was a way for local organizations to protect employees from being left behind by the silo wars. In 2007, Mello and his team began their project to defeat silos because they needed to protect the CEO and make his companies immune from the slum community.[1] The research found that Silos were critical to the “Silo Wars”(as defined by the Institute for Business Ethics as “what is described as a hostile workplace atmosphere”), but did nothing to stop the silo wars or their effects. In fact, they were the first organization to study the influence of companies like Google to protect the CEO or to give the CEO the benefit of the doubt when they needed to go where Silicon Valley was headed but then find that it wasn’t so great. They also found that silos were a key to promoting transparency in the workplace: their researchers were able to reveal much about what is happening on the inside to ensure that no silo was closed. Even in Silicon Valley, those who supported silos were often seen as bullies and could not fight back. It became their mission of not only protecting executives and other leaders but also promoting the virtues of silos as a way to build a more friendly workplace. Mello and his Project Director at this time, Kevin Dolan, wrote a book called “Silo Wars: The Inside Story of the Silo Wars”.
The “Silo Wars” Project started out
Silos, Politics and Turf Wars is a provocative and honest look at business power dynamics in Silicon Valley and why the company is doing a great job of protecting its leaders from being left behind at times.
Silos, Politics and Turf Wars is a unique contribution from an industry driven by people rather than the needs of a business. It delves deep into the reasons for silos while providing readers with the most up-to-date facts about the business from current management, organizational dynamics, or other sources. It provides insight as to why silos exist, why the silos matter, and about the current state of Silicon Valley that’s facing change.
Silos, Politics and Turf Wars: The Case of Silicon Valley’s Most Powerful Man was published on the site of Silicon Valley Business Review, now that it is available in pdf format in the United Post Office. Read the first, and most popular, chapter here.
As a business lawyer with a strong personal interest in managing and managing organizations, I was surprised at how often I met these highly influential people. What surprised me and impressed many was how they were the ones who were able to work hard to protect our CEO in their own right. Silos, Politics and Turf Wars
Silos, Politics and Turf Wars: An Inside Story of the Silo Wars was written by Larry K. Moore.
Lorenzo S. Mello had been director of the “Silo Wars” Project, a nonprofit which helps companies fight the war on silos. It focused on silos because it was a way for local organizations to protect employees from being left behind by the silo wars. In 2007, Mello and his team began their project to defeat silos because they needed to protect the CEO and make his companies immune from the slum community.[1] The research found that Silos were critical to the “Silo Wars”(as defined by the Institute for Business Ethics as “what is described as a hostile workplace atmosphere”), but did nothing to stop the silo wars or their effects. In fact, they were the first organization to study the influence of companies like Google to protect the CEO or to give the CEO the benefit of the doubt when they needed to go where Silicon Valley was headed but then find that it wasn’t so great. They also found that silos were a key to promoting transparency in the workplace: their researchers were able to reveal much about what is happening on the inside to ensure that no silo was closed. Even in Silicon Valley, those who supported silos were often seen as bullies and could not fight back. It became their mission of not only protecting executives and other leaders but also promoting the virtues of silos as a way to build a more friendly workplace. Mello and his Project Director at this time, Kevin Dolan, wrote a book called “Silo Wars: The Inside Story of the Silo Wars”.
The “Silo Wars” Project started out
The book has an appealing tone. The first part of the book weaves a fable of Jude Cousins, a good-hearted, self-employed management consultant who wants to help companies function better and show their people how to get along, and eventually develops a practice that helps companies beat the silo problem.
The crux of the book lies in the assertion that building a cohesive leadership team is the first critical step that an organization must take in order to succeed. However, even while leadership teams become cohesive, there is another, more structural issue that often thwarts their efforts and creates unnecessary politics within an organization. That issue is that of the creation of silos. Silos are barriers that surface between departments within an organization, causing people who are supposed to be on the same team to work against one another. And whether this phenomenon is called departmental politics, divisional rivalry or turf warfare, it is one of the most frustrating aspects of life in any sizable organization. In most situations, silos rise up not because of what executives are doing purposefully, but rather because of what they are failing to do: provide themselves and their employees with a compelling context for working together.
Without the aforementioned context, employees at all levels, especially executives at the operational levels, easily lose their way. “Even the most well-meaning, intelligent people get distracted and confused amid the endless list of tactical and administrative details that come their way every day. Pulled in many directions without a compass, they pursue seemingly worthwhile agendas under the assumption that it will be in the best interest of the organization as a whole.” But what normally happens is that after a while, employees in different divisions begin to see their colleagues moving in different directions, and they begin to wonder why they aren‟t on the same page.
Over time, their confusion turns into disappointment that eventually becomes resentment, at times, even hostility toward their teammates, with whom they were supposed to work toget