Silo thinking
In January, I visited San Francisco and had the chance to meet Tim Brown, the chair of IDEO. It was amazing to chat with him. One of the questions I asked was what he found particularly wonderful about design thinking. He gave two answers. First, he said he loved the process of coming up with new ideas. But second, and this is what I want to focus on here: he talked about the way design thinking helps people to help people.
In the gospel passage for this week (Luke 12:13-21) Jesus tells a simple story that’s profoundly challenging. A wealthy man has a glut of crops and decides to store them up so he can sell them later, when the prices are higher. It makes sound business sense, if your goal is to increase your own personal wealth. But this kind of strategy is exactly what can make food harder to afford for people who are already struggling.
What’s interesting is the way Jesus tells the story. He highlights the internal dialogue of the rich man: he thinks to himself, talks to himself, even speaks to his own soul. Jesus uses that storytelling device a few times, and it’s never a good sign. When our thoughts just echo around inside our own mental silo, we tend to come up with terrible ideas.
That’s where I think design thinking is really clever. It forces us out of that silo. It sends us to talk with people, to observe how they actually live. If the rich man had left his luxurious home and spent some time with people who were struggling to make ends meet, maybe he would have developed some empathy. And maybe he’d have made different decisions about hoarding all that grain.
Jesus’ punchline is clear and confronting: a good life doesn’t consist in chasing an abundance of possessions. In the end of the story, the rich man dies. He couldn’t take any of it with him.
I think if he’d been less caught up in his own head—less focused on building security and comfort for himself at the expense of others— he might have lived a richer life. Who knows? Maybe even a longer one.
A good life isn’t about chasing more stuff. A good life is about seeking abundance in human connection, and in our connection with God.
Great connection. I’d love to extend the rich man parable with a few observations I’ve seen.
The man storing grain for leaner years could be doing this to help others. After all, when famine comes he can then supply the people who don’t have enough. He might even charge a bit more to cover the cost of storage and ensure he can provide the same service next time. An advisor might have even sold him this as a way to help others and help himself.
However, when it comes time to actually sell his goods during a famine, the same advisor tells him to charge as much as he possibly can! After all, money is neutral and just a sign of how much people value things. He ought to charge as much as possible so he has more money to invest and help others… So he does and starts storing more and more coinage.
And while he has helped some, those on the poverty line can’t afford his grain prices.
I have seen some patterns like this in online marketing where gurus start by appealing to our better natures but at some point it just becomes a way to store as much wealth as we can.
Silo thinking is no joke. It’s really common to find within homogeneous groups-if you are only speaking to people you perceive to be like you, then you deny yourself that chance to expand your horizons, like you suggested with the rich man spending time with those less fortunate.
It’s also really easy for it to snowball and cause deeper divides, which in turn makes it harder to break out of.