Conventional wisdom argues that silos in business are bad, preventing knowledge and information from spreading beyond the silo’s walls. When it comes to returning to work, proponents of all hands on deck in the office insist that remote work creates silos and all but eliminates the opportunity for chance encounters that lead to new ideas or shared knowledge. A new study from Harvard, which analyzed billions of employee emails from 2020 and 2021, found that silos did solidify but that the results were actually positive.

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The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, March 21, 2022.

We are hosting a Communicators Zoom Chat each Thursday at 1 p.m. ET. For credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly or request the credentials in our Facebook group or send an email to fircomments@gmail.com.

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. Neville’s link blog, Outbox, is available, as well.

Links from this episode:

• Silos That Work: How the Pandemic Changed the Way We Collaborate
• Dynamic Silos: Increased Modularity in Intra-organizational Communication Networks during the Covid-19 Pandemic (PDF)

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