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The Silo Effect: Why putting everything in its place isn't such a bright idea Paperback – 27 Aug 2015

by Gillian Tett (Author)
4.3 out of 5 stars 20 customer reviews
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Product details

  • Paperback: 304 pages
  • Publisher: Little, Brown (27 Aug. 2015)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1844087581
  • ISBN-13: 978-1844087587
  • Product Dimensions: 15.3 x 2.3 x 23.4 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 498,753 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Product Description

Review

Engagingly written, this is also a history of our need to classify the world and how that can be our downfall (Hazel Davis The Times)

Here's a piece of advice: read The Silo Effect, if only because your boss may already be immersed in Gillian Tett's latest study on how organisations can go badly awry. You would not want to be caught unawares, now, would you? Also, you might be missing something rather brilliant. Yes, honestly . . . Tett's anthropological approach adds academic rigour and richness' (Anne Ashworth The Times)

A profound idea, richly analyzed (Wall Street Journal (Europe))

Highly intelligent, enjoyable and enlivened by a string of vivid case studies. It is also genuinely important . . . her prescription for curing the pathological silo-isation of business and government is refreshingly unorthodox and, in my view, convincing (Felix Martin Financial Times)

This is not just a business book (The Economist)

Gillian Tett is a gifted, innovative and informative writer . . . Tett writes beautifully and her book is full of insights. Those who do not know her work should make up for the oversight (Vince Cable New Statesman)

Supremely wise (Rohan Silva Evening Standard)

Useful for work - and for life (Anne Ashworth The Times)

Book Description

* The brilliant and insightful new book from Gillian Tett, author of the bestselling FOOL'S GOLD

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Customer Reviews

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Top Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 starsBlinkers off
By Hande Z TOP 500 REVIEWER on 10 Sept. 2015
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
This is an interesting book about the dangers of specialisation. The most common problem of specialisation is that it causes ‘tunnel vision’, a phenomenon in which the specialist sees all problems in the context of his specialisation. When a cardiologist sees a person collapsing and thinks straightaway that it was due to a cardiac arrest – that’s an example of the silo effect.

The related point is that specialists tend not to see the big picture. They tend not to discuss with people outside their specialisation and thus remain limited in their approach to problems. Using a number of real stories, Tett shows how we can overcome the silo effect. She also relates the converse – namely with the story of the BlueMoutain Capital, a hedge fund, she shows how the fund took advantage of the silo effect to make big profits. It is a direct contrast to the massive failure of the UBS bank during the financial crisis. It is a fascinating story of how a big institution (JP Morgan) did not know what its ultra-specialist unit (known as the ‘Chief Investment Office’) was doing – it was trading in an ultra-specilised product known as IG9. Few outside the banking circle knew about IG9. Not many in JP Morgan did either. BlueMountain Capital studied the trends and discrepancies (a complicated description but lucidly explained by Tett) and took the opposite positions from JP Morgan’s CIO unit.

There is also the fascinating story about Brett Goldstein, the man who created OpenTable to help well-to-do people book restaurant seats. On 11 September 2001 Goldstein began to see a bigger picture of his own life and he ended up working with Jody Weiss, the newly appointed police superintendent of the Chicago Police.Read more ›
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4.0 out of 5 starsA Great Primer
By 20:20 on 10 Oct. 2015
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
Having pre-ordered the book ahead of publication and having waited for three years for the book to come out I confess I really was hoping for rather more. Sorry Gillian, I say this despite following your columns with huge interest and respect.

The stories that are told are fascinating and show excellent examples of silo busting but...

What are the best offered solutions that come out though? We have: 'bring the data together, think, and use imagination'. Fine. Also six reasonable lessons. All of which are perfectly valid – so far as they go....

But are there really no more effective possible solutions? (and if not now, then in the future?) or was a deeper inquiry into possible future solutions too much to hope for?

For instance, there seems to be a missing chapter on how the internet could help overarch silos – as it surely will at some point? The net is far more than a source of information. Its greatest effect is as a network: what was dubbed initially the 'new economy' is now the 'network economy'. So where are the comments, not so much about current social media – a lot of which will drastically change soon as it steadily becomes easier to have trustless peer-to-peer contact – but about future networking opportunities which will help shape good silos and minimize bad ones?

I was also somewhat saddened that the book seemed to be so business school and American oriented. I guess this was on publishers' advice to meet greater sales prospects.

I had hoped it would be wider in vision, and have more on other non-business areas, for example, in the field of defence.Read more ›
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2.0 out of 5 starsA Very Palpable Slip
By James Murphy on 3 Sept. 2015
Format: Hardcover
Many will surely agree that Gillian Tett should automatically be made president or prime minister of whatever country she is inhabiting at any given time. For there is no more lucid, fluent and perceptive commentator on our general state of affairs, specially financial and commercial, to be heard in any quarter. On TV, she is the must-watch/must-listen personality whenever complexity threatens to cloud understanding She is simply outstanding at what she does.

But The Silo Effect is not good karma. The idiotic sub-title suggests the dark presence of a heavy-handed editor. And to talk about “silos” (ref. over-departmentalised business organisation) is already to use clapped-out consultant-speak. More, to depend so much on anthropology (Ms Tett’s doctoral subject-matter) - “useful in making sense of the modern world” - is paradoxically to back the whole analysis of success/failure in that modern world into an academic silo of its very own. As a result, references to the doings of old Pierre Bourdieu are shoe-horned into the text all the way through. It all gets very forced.

One will accept that Ms Tett has had to submit to the disciplines of American non-fiction. One of the consequences is that everything covered here - eg the troubles at UBS and Sony / the successes at Facebook and the Chicago PD - takes the form of a linear, chronological narrative (“On March 9, a team of regulators from Switzerland flew from Bern to London” / “By the middle of 2009, Jody Weiss…was feeling frustrated”, etc, etc). This has the effect of infantilising an analysis which is meant to be rooted in the skilled academic’s capacity to conceptualise and not just describe.

Inevitably perhaps, the language sometimes gets very loose indeed.Read more ›
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 starsSocial anthropology explained most readably

Excellent plain words analysis of organisational behaviour and how it moves markets and either sustains or destroys innovation - for everyone interested in how business works.

Published 9 months ago by Kindle Customer
5.0 out of 5 starsA very good book once again from Gillian Tett

A very good book once again from Gillian Tett. Good examples of both success and failures in "de-soloing". Strongly recommended.

Published 10 months ago by Amazon Customer
3.0 out of 5 starsfeels like an early draft

This idea of a management book on the perils of organisations being arranged in rigid silos is not immediately inspiring, it could be filed alongside the travel book on the arctic... Read more

Published 10 months ago by tallmanbaby
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

Gillian Tett has a way of making the difficult seem obvious. Another masterpiece of explanation from this insightful genius.

Published 10 months ago by Six Badges
5.0 out of 5 starsBrill

Great

Published 11 months ago by Malc Peirce
3.0 out of 5 starsCase studies in silos and how to avoid them

The concept is that organisations that work in silos and think in silos do less well in life than those that don't - and also that antholopology can help us see and overcome the... Read more

Published 11 months ago by William Jordan
4.0 out of 5 starsMy review, where I point out the silos in ...

My review, where I point out the silos in "The Silo Effect" - including the fact Gillian Tett didn't invent the term 'silo' as she implies - here:... Read more

Published 11 months ago by Prof Colin Talbot
5.0 out of 5 starsFresh perspective that makes sense

Excellent narrative and logical explanation
A really good read that shines a strong light on a complicated topic, it made a lot of sense

Published 12 months ago by Mr C.J, Kane & Mrs Loreto Kane
4.0 out of 5 starsInsightful and well-written

Interesting and very well written. The thesis proposed chimes with my experience.

Published 12 months ago by Constantine Goulimis
4.0 out of 5 starsFour Stars

Christmas present

Published 12 months ago by Andrew Beardsmore

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