Interviewer: What do people mean by silos in teams?

Expert: When groups stop sharing information with each other. Your marketing team uses one set of tools and processes. Your engineering team uses completely different ones. Neither knows what the other is doing until something breaks.

Interviewer: How do silos form?

Expert: Usually gradually. Teams adopt tools that fit their needs. Marketing starts using Airtable. Engineering prefers Jira. Now information lives in two places. Add different meeting schedules, separate Slack channels, and different reporting structures. Within six months, they're basically separate companies.

Interviewer: What problems do silos create?

Expert: Duplicate work is common. Marketing creates customer research that engineering never sees, so they build features nobody wants. Or engineering makes technical changes that break marketing campaigns without warning anyone. Projects get delayed because someone didn't know relevant information existed elsewhere.

Interviewer: Can silos ever be useful?

Expert: Some separation helps teams focus. The problem is when walls become impermeable. You want boundaries with doors, not brick walls.

Interviewer: How do you fix them?

Expert: Shared tools help but aren't enough. You need regular cross-team meetings, joint projects, and people who actively connect groups. Someone has to own the flow of information between teams.