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# Nobody Thinks They Work in a Silo
- URL: https://www.jaimecalaf.com/nobody-thinks-they-work-in-a-silo/
- Published: 2026-08-26T11:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-26T11:00:02.000Z
- Author: Jaime Calaf 
- Tags: organizational-culture, teams, decision making, special operations, business strategy

If I walked into any room at almost any company and asked anyone whether they believed working in silos is best for an organization, nine out of ten times I would get a negative response. The problem is that most people don't realize when they are working in silos, or even that their organization itself is hierarchical; in fact, most organizations still are, whether they realize it or not.

Recently, I reread General Stanley McChrystal's *Team of Teams* as part of reacquainting myself with how to eliminate silos inside organizations. In the book, McChrystal faced an enemy that was fluid and adaptive, while the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) was built for speed and efficiency but rigidly hierarchical, each operational division operating independently of the others. The problem was simple: if he didn't adapt the organization to work at the speed the terrorist organizations operated, they would always be behind the curve, endangering lives as a result.

Traditional hierarchies were built for a world where work could be predicted, divided, and optimized. It assumes leaders can identify the best process in advance and pass it down through the organization. That works when the environment is stable. But in a fast-changing environment, the "best" process may be obsolete by the time it reaches the people doing the work. Adaptive organizations respond by sharing more context, connecting teams across silos, and trusting people closest to the problem to act.

McChrystal's fix was to literally create a team made of other teams — what he described as "shared consciousness" — using shared working environments, meetings, and even temporary exchange programs between sister organizations. Teams whose missions supported the overall fight, but who had no operational dependence on each other, worked side by side and learned each other's nuances, so the command became a cohesive entity able to share information faster and pivot just as quickly, adapting to the enemy it was confronting. McChrystal's answer to a fragmented, siloed command was a daily habit. Every day, he ran a 90-minute video briefing that eventually pulled in close to 7,000 people across different branches, agencies, and allied forces. The point wasn't just information sharing; it was giving everyone, from analysts to frontline operators, the same picture of the fight so they understood not just their own piece but the whole mission. That common understanding is what he called shared consciousness. Once people had it, he could do the second half of the fix: push real decision-making power down to the people actually facing the problem in the moment, rather than routing every call up a chain of command. He called this empowered execution, and together the two ideas turned a lumbering hierarchy into something that could move at the speed of the threat it was chasing.

Then there's addressing the ego. To me, the one thing that destroys almost anything human, whether an organization, a project, or anything in this world. In the book, McChrystal admits he grew up believing a good leader operates like a chess master, calculating every move and directing every piece on the board. I too held that belief. The problem is that this belief fails when the "opponent" is a decentralized network that adapts faster than any single mind can track. McChrystal finds the answer in the gardener: someone who doesn't force a plant to grow but prepares the soil, waters, weeds, and protects, then lets growth happen on its own terms. That is the reality of keeping a garden. There is so much you can do, and in the end you need to allow them to grow as they will. Applied to leadership, that means setting clear intent and building the right conditions — trust, transparency, common purpose — and then stepping back from micromanaging the outcome. This is harder because it requires trusting a system you don't fully control.

The same failure pattern shows up constantly in business. Companies with deep functional silos — finance, product, engineering, sales, all protecting their own information — run into the same wall JSOC did: by the time a problem is understood and escalated up the reporting chain, the window to act has passed. The fix looks similar too. Organizations that flatten information flow and give cross-functional teams real authority to act on what they see tend to move faster and adapt better than ones still waiting on decisions to travel up and down a hierarchy.

Toyota has practiced a form of empowered execution on their factory floors for decades. Any worker on the line — regardless of their title — can stop production as soon as they spot a defect, which can be extremely costly to the operation. The idea is that by doing so, the problem gets fixed as quickly as possible, reducing the chance that it could escalate into a bigger issue downstream. The same belief underpins what McChrystal did: the workers who perform the work encounter the problem first, and trusting them to act is better than routing the call up a chain.

Letting go of control, even in the name of speed and adaptability, runs against many instincts about what "good leadership" looks like. However, flat organizations, where transparency and interdepartmental collaboration are the norm, make decisions faster than their competition. Being able to work at a higher speed, pivot faster when necessary, and correct problems faster is undoubtedly an unfair advantage that organizations should pursue relentlessly.