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At my in-law’s annual reunions of the offspring of Danish immigrants who settled in northern Iowa, one can learn a lot about life by listening to the stories about farming. Last year, I heard a retired farmer reminisce about the time he loaded the grain silo on Thorvold’s farm with chopped hay. Because he waited too long to load his crop into the silo, the hay had become so dry that it molded and caused the whole silo to overheat. He had to unload tons of smoldering ash, one shovel full at a time for hours.  Grueling work! Time lost! Crop lost!

Last week I attended a conference of state education leaders who frequently lamented that they couldn’t break down silos within their agency and among agencies they work with to serve students in their state. Silos! What lessons have been learned about silos that make the metaphor so meaningful for educators?

The silo metaphor typically is a reference to storing one type of grain separate from another, just as parts of an organization are functionally segregated or isolated. Dennis Roming, a business consultant, explains that organizational silos isolate departments and people. He states that organizational silos occur when “department information and knowledge are sealed off from other departments; workers do not talk to people outside their department; the department does not offer to help or share resources with other parts of the organization; and/or the department only focuses on achieving their work goals even at the detriment of other work units and the organization as a whole.”[1] Silo behavior may contribute to insular thinking, inefficiencies, and limited decision-making.

Agencies create work units for a reason. There are efficiencies that occur when divisions, bureaus, work teams, task forces and committees are formed –work needs to be “chunked”, people need support and supervision, and assignments need to be shared.

Thinking about the mishap with Thorvold’s silo, one can make other important connections to educational leadership.

Farming:  Attend to what you put into your silos or risk your crop.

Education:  Be sure you give people in each work unit the information and resources they need to do their work or success will be unlikely.

 

Farming:   A farmer puts up the hay when the hay is ready, not when the farmer is ready.

Education:  Waiting too long to start engaging staff and stakeholders in work may not be in the best interest of the initiative.  Readiness should be gauged by a variety of variables, not just the comfort levels or readiness of the planners.

 

Farming:  Leaving the crop in the dark too long may ruin everything.

Education: Leaving team members in the dark about internal and external planning, decisions made, and changing contextual factors may hurt the project.

 

Farming:  Measure the conditions in your silo often or it may be too late to adjust.

Education:  Attend to formative data frequently. The course of an initiative can change without your realizing it, diminishing the implementation. Make sure all the participating teams and work units share in the analysis of data.

 

Farming:  A season can start out looking like a great yield is in store, but can end up with the farmer alone in a dark place digging out fertilizer.

Education:  Many projects look like implementation is well underway, but the results disappoint.

Business blogs have suggestions for preventing silos – increase collaboration, adjust top-down hierarchies, build trust, etc.  Another resource that leaders who seek to avoid silos should explore is implementation science. To guide the design and roll-out of programs and initiatives, implementation science can help leaders to:

• Clarify program/initiative vision, goals, and plans for action;
• Build in ways to engage stakeholders to ensure that all responsible parties are on board;
• Consider the cultural factors at play that impact the accomplishment of initative goals;
• Design communication structures that allow for flow of information internally as well as up and down the levels of the various organizations that are scaling up an initiative;
• Intentionally structure opportunities to collaborate; and
• Organize and use data analysis to continuously inform leaders and practitioners about how well the effort is being implemented.

The silo metaphor is used widely in education circles to help explain communication and cultural problems. Maybe a different farm metaphor might help explain another organizational phenomenon.  Perhaps in my next blog I will share the family story about the outcomes of driving Thorvold’s manure spreader in high gear.