{"id":3871,"date":"2015-08-13T12:34:50","date_gmt":"2015-08-13T16:34:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/?p=3871"},"modified":"2015-08-13T12:34:50","modified_gmt":"2015-08-13T16:34:50","slug":"silos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wrote-about\/silos\/","title":{"rendered":"Silos"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are bottlenecks in your communication and it’s slowing your team down. Working in a large organization, there are two ways to share information collaboratively.<\/p>\n

First, there is an open flow of information. For instance, a wiki. When I worked for the National Cancer Institute, we had a giant wiki all the technical staff used, updated and relied upon for information. It was a fantastic way to share information across teams and locations. Everyone was able to contribute to the knowledge of the group. Everyone was accountable for their changes.<\/p>\n

Second, there is a collection of silos. This is Sharepoint. These are network drives. The silos prohibit the free-flow of information and limit it to pre-approved groups of people. Gatekeepers for those groups hold the reigns of their information tightly and in order for new people to access the information, they must be granted access.<\/p>\n

Silos are slow.<\/strong><\/p>\n

When information is locked away inside a silo, it can take hours, or days for the information to be available to those who need it. When information is open, it can be accessed immediately and work can continue.<\/p>\n

How many times has this happened to you? You’re at work and you need to do something for the first time. For me, that’s fairly often. When I had access to a well-manicured wiki, it was a matter of searching and finding the information I needed.<\/p>\n

Now, I asked for where the information lived. It could be on the Intranet. It could be on Sharepoint. It could be locked away on a network drive somewhere.<\/p>\n

I got a quick answer over email.<\/p>\n

\n There are some user guides located at https:\/\/sharepointURL\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Great. I clicked the link and read the guide. Now I am ready to complete the work!<\/p>\n

Wrong.<\/p>\n

\"Sharepoint<\/p>\n

I’m denied access because I am not on the pre-approved list of people who can access this how-to guide.<\/p>\n

I replied to the email that I did not have access. I then clicked the Request access<\/em> link and found this helpful page.<\/p>\n

\"Sharepoint<\/p>\n

An anonymous form where I can Send Request<\/em>. Where does it go? Who manages this access? Can I call them? Email them? No.<\/p>\n

I completed the form with the information I needed to get access to and why. And I wait.<\/p>\n

That was yesterday. Today, there is no answer. Nor is there any access.<\/p>\n

I am not expecting it any time soon. There is no accountability with this system. There is no way to see where my request is or if it went anywhere.<\/p>\n

Lip Service<\/h3>\n

Many organizations say things like we want to foster more communication and collaboration.<\/em> And then they roll out tools which do precisely the opposite.<\/p>\n

I’ve seen where a culture has grown around the open sharing of ideas and information and it’s a magical thing. But too many times information is stuck in silos.<\/p>\n

Silos will always stifle communication and collaboration and put up unneeded road blocks. In order to foster communication and collaboration information must flow between teams seamlessly. If a person on another team needs a document, it shouldn’t involve a level of approval to make that document available.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are bottlenecks in your communication and it’s slowing your team down. Working in a large organization, there are two ways to share information collaboratively. First, there is an open flow of information. For instance, a wiki. When I worked for the National Cancer Institute, we had a giant wiki all the technical staff used, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"New Post - Silos\r\nIf you want to foster communication, ditch the silos.","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[908,244,906,907,905],"class_list":["post-3871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wrote-about","tag-collaboration","tag-communication","tag-sharepoint","tag-silos","tag-wiki"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3871"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3871\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3877,"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3871\/revisions\/3877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peroty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}