Public and private silos

We’ve all heard someone lament at how poor public services are at what they do. Two common refrains are:

One hand doesn’t know what the other is doing

and

They have such stupid rules in place – they lack common sense.

Though it doesn’t always follow the lament, an unfavourable comparison with how the private sector is run often comes soon afterwards (and quite often from politicians).

It will come as something as a surprise for commentators such as these to see Gillian Tett’s summary of her latest book, “The Silo Effect: Why putting everything in its place isn’t such a bright idea“:

Tett notes of banks that:

One hand doesn’t know what the other is doing

and

They have such stupid rules in place – they lack common sense.

How funny! It’s almost as if the distinction between public and private organisations is next-to-useless when pitted against the issues of any organisation as a complex combination of weirdly-behaving humans trying to get something poorly defined done.

 

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