The new balance of power in Washington, DC, has sent pundits scrambling to predict how the Republican Party and the Democratic Party will interact. Conservative pundits tout theories that the Democrats will be forced to the political center, if not slightly to the political right by a conservative President Bush. Simultaneously, liberal pundits are celebrating the projected migration of a hawkish Executive Branch from the radical right to the conservative left. All this while our elected officials go to great pains to promise they will work in the 'spirit of bipartisanism' and that there will not be 'gridlock' in Washington, DC.
In the disaster field office, we learned long ago that it is not business or even political theory that insures the rapid inefficient movement of information and eliminates political or bureaucratic gridlock. The process that works best for eliminating gridlock and territorialism comes to us from a Harvard in the early 1980’s.
Gergen and Marcus described a concept in economics known as 'silozation'. In this groundbreaking theory the authors posit that traditional business models allow for the progression of information from the base of the 'silo' up to the highest levels of management at the top of the silo or the dissemination of information from the top of the silo downward, but prevent communication between organizations (silos) through the wall at any middle level of management.
Gergen and Marcus state that silozation prevents the development of relationships between various professional organizations or even divisions within a single corporation. It also results in 'choke points' in communications because information between organizations must be funneled through the top to the bottom of the silo before it could be disseminated to the other members of each organization. Gergen and Marcus recommended that in business and economics the silos be cut down or totally removed. By doing this, organizations can communicate risk, benefit and opportunity, relying on their unique capability to insure customer loyalty and market success.
Commander Peter Marghella, USN (Ret.) has introduced this theory to the disaster field office. Commander Marghella correctly identified that individual professions within disaster medicine and individual organizations within emergency management maintained thick walled silos that prevented cooperation and efficient in austere environments. The recommendations to remove the silos were impossible and cut through them where they could not be completely removed has improved the efficiency in responding to disasters large and small.
Washington, DC and our nations elected officials need to remove their silos.
The artificial divisions created by classifying candidates as Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal helps poorly educated voters select from often near identical choices. However, once elected, candidates represent all of us and they must work with every other elected official in government, even if they do not agree with them. It is only by removing the silos that pen them in that our elected officials can do the work through which we, their constituents, have charged them.
Government is not a college football game and Washington, DC is not a bowl stadium. Republicans and Democrats cannot and should not don partisan uniforms, strap on helmets and prepare to do battle. As the people who place them in office, we cannot sit on the home or visitor's side of the stadium, paint ourselves in our favorite team's colors and scream for the blood of our opponents. If we do, in the end, the blood on our hands will be our own.
Dr. Maurice A. Ramirez is co-founder of Disaster Life Support of North America, Inc., a national provider of Disaster Preparation, Planning, Response and Recovery education. Through his consulting firm High Alert, LLC., he serves on expert panels for pandemic preparedness and healthcare surge planning with Congressional and Cabinet Members. Board certified in multiple medical specialties, Dr. Ramirez is Founding Chairperson of the American Board of Disaster Medicine and a Senior Physician-Federal Medical Officer for the Department of Homeland Security. Cited in 24 textbooks with numerous published articles, he is co-creator of C5RITICAL and author of Mastery Against Adversity. Dr. Ramirez invites comments at: http://www.disaster-blog.com | 
