Silos are the enemy.

Information silos, that is. I have no beef with grain storage structures.

^ Read by a robot trying to impersonate me. Forgive the delivery, it’s doing its best.

TLDR: Information silos are a side effect of human advancement. And they frustrate the f*ck out of me. I will write about improving communication while sharing bits and bobs from my life. Sub if you're ready to bust up some silos with me.

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No less than a dozen millennia ago, life was simple. Perhaps not easy, but certainly simple. 

Hunt. Gather. Eat. Sleep. Procreate. Chill. Be happy.

Sure, their iPads were little more than scratched-up stone. But they made do.

Fast forward. 2023.

Today's iPads have enough storage to keep a copy of Wikipedia and nearly every published book in the Project Guttenberg. It breaks my brain a bit when I think about it.

Enter silos.

Humanity has worked wonders with storing information. But consumption, parsing, and application of that information bottleneck us. We combat this by specializing, at least to a degree, in various fields so we can: Doordash. Eat. Sleep. Procreate. Chill. Be Depressed.

And everyone around us is a specialist in a different variety of fields.

But wait. How do we efficiently communicate when much of that communication relies on a shared understanding of a given field?

In my experience, we don't. At least not well. Yet.

Here’s an example from my workplace.

Multiple managers with similar duties working in disparate locations. Each one, through the support of their teams, will execute a series of processes each day. Some of those managers will iterate and improve on those processes. These improvements can have a significant impact on an organizations success - Whether its efficiency improvements or increased customer satisfaction scores.

But they’re in their own silo.

They may go months or years (if ever) without meeting, and sharing their learnings.

If a workplace doesn’t develop and embrace mechanisms to improve information sharing…well, I guess they just won’t know how much better they could be.

Imagine how many cross-department meetings you could wipe off your calendar if humans were better at summarizing, disseminating, and, on the other side, consuming information.

Imagine how much richer our relationships could be if we were open and able to lifelong learning about hobbies, professions, and interests without creating a long life of study.

Imagine a guy on the internet who wants to start a blog and is searching for a theme. He's recently encountered some unnecessarily frustrating challenges in the workplace related to information silos. And he's recently had conversations with friends on subjects they're passionate about but he's clueless about. 

You know who I'm talking about.

I don't have solutions, but I'm on the road to finding them and doing my part to solve the puzzles information silos have introduced into modern life. 

In this blog, you'll likely find a myriad of subjects (ironically, silos), but in the interest of preventing taller, thicker-walled silos from forming, I will strive to provide valuable TLDRs and connections between subjects.

Join me and subscribe. We'll take on silos together.

For bonus points - share an experience with information silos in your personal or professional life.