#the silo effect

[random-bookquotes]

Studying anthropology tends to change the way you look at the world. It leaves a distinctive chip in your brain, or lens over your eye. Your mind-set becomes instinctive: wherever you go to work, you start asking questions about how different elements of society interact, looks at the gap between rhetoric and reality, noting the concealed functions of rituals and symbols, and hunting out social silences. Anyone who has been immersed in anthropology is doomed to be an insider-outside for the rest of their life; they can never take anything entirely at face value, but are compelled to constantly ask: why?

Gillian Tett, The Silo Effect

[random-bookquotes]

But now, at the age of forty, he had come to realize that you do not need to start a revolution to make a difference. Just shifting the dial a few inches matters too.

Gillian Tett, The Silo Effect

[random-bookquotes]

Indeed, one reason it was easy to ignore this shadowy world was precisely because this language sounded so alien. In a world where technology keeps becoming more complex, we all tend to turn our eyes away from specialist jargon we do not understand. Professional experts wield power precisely because they wrap their craft in language that is labeled as the preserve of "geeks" It is hard to start a public policy debate if there are no widely accessible words to explain the ideas being conveyed, and when it came to nonbank finance, it seemed that there were no good phrases available at all.

Gillian Tett, The Silo Effect

[random-bookquotes]

But while the world is increasingly interlinked as a system, our lives remain fragmented. Many large organizations are divided, and then subdivided into numerous different departments, which often fail to talk to each other- let alone collaborate. People often live in a separate mental and social "ghettos," talking and coexisting only with people like us.

Gillian Tett, The Silo Effect

[coverspy]

The Silo Effect, Gillian Tett (F, 20s, blond hair, FedEx package in lap, blue floral dress, C train)

[ice-cream-books]

The Silo Effect by Gillian Tett with a stack of Klondike Bars. Cover by Nico Taylor.