So yesterday, I was sitting at my desk, listening to an online ITIL training course and going about my happy go-lucky day, when a group of people came walking through my area.  One of the individuals of this group stopped at my cubicle and said “Hey, it’s Michael from Yammer.”  (If you don’t know about Yammer, it’s basically a Twitter-like system for specific domains).  So it was great to see some fellow “yammerites” at my place of work, but one of them made a comment that got me thinking (which can be dangerous from time to time).  The comment went something like “sorry we’re not on Yammer a lot, but thanks for carrying the torch.”

Here I am, in a department that historically lives in silos, and I’m trying to actually break out and communicate with others.  But apparently IT isn’t the only one that lives in a silo; other departments in my organization live in silos as well.  In fact, this place has more silos then any commercial farming operation.  It’s really kind of sad and indicative of a core problem when we can’t even take the first step towards aligning IT and the business, which is simply just communicating with each other.  Ironically, this is a problem at a time when everyone lives in social networks and it’s never been easier to communicate.

I wish I could come up with some big “lesson” from this problem, but I think it’s pretty obvious.  Excuse me now, my silo is calling.

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Started working in IT in 1999 as a support desk analyst as a way to help pay for food during college. Studied Electrical Engineering for two years before realizing biochemistry was more fun than differential equations, and so ultimately graduated with a Biology degree in 2006. Having (reluctantly) failed at getting accepted into dental school, embraced working in IT and has gone broke becoming an ITIL Expert. Likes to jog, sing camp songs, quote Mel Brooks movie lines and make dumb jokes and loves working for an Israeli tech company where December 25th is a regular work day.