Silos are Bad for Business
“In reality, true military innovation is less about technology than about operational and organizational transformation.” — Christian Brose, The Kill Chain
I recently read Christian Brose’s book The Kill Chain, which argues, in part, that the US military has failed to adopt technologies that are in widespread use in the civilian world. According to Christian Brose, what is table stakes for any number of Silicon Valley technology companies is absent in the world of military technology. Brose’s specific argument is that while the US military has maintained outdated weapons systems that can’t communicate with each other or with soldiers, Silicon Valley has perfected technologies that enable automatic data analysis, scalability, interoperability, and extensibility. At root, the claim is that the US military has remained in a silo, and has proven itself unable to avail itself of technology that is widely available in the civilian world.
My interest here isn’t addressing the accuracy of Brose’s claims, as I’m not a military expert. However, if we take his claims at face value, we can infer some lessons that are broadly applicable to business and life. Silos are bad. Silos constrain information, inhibit innovation, and retard progress. If it is true that the US military has been held back from its true potential due to it not incorporating the latest technological innovations into its arsenal, so, too, is it true that lumbering companies that adopt “not invented here” syndrome also fall into this trap.
Valuable innovations can arise from anywhere, and companies which can seize upon these innovations and solve customers’ problems, tend to do better than their more hidebound competitors. For example, a few months ago I created an LLC, for which I needed a business bank account. I was faced with two choices: go into an old school bricks-and-mortar bank and open an account by filling out a lot of paperwork and talking to a person (in the middle of a pandemic) or going on line, finding a neobank, filling out a few digital forms, submitting a photo of my government-issued ID, and sitting back to finish my coffee. Which would you choose?
In the bank account scenario above, the bricks-and-mortar institution is the US military, and the web-based neobank is Silicon Valley. One makes it easy and efficient for customers to do business, and one is inefficient, analog, paper-based, plodding, and frustrating. I know where I want to be, both as a customer and an employee. And I know which one will prove more valuable over time.