IGNACIO – The ninth annual La Plata County Economic Summit began early Wednesday morning with a variety of panels and group sessions ranging from overcoming isolating business practices to understanding the complexity and implications of the “Internet of Things.”
Parady Financial Group partner Julie Duvall and La Plata County Treasurer Allison Morrissey led a workshop on trumping detrimental business silos, which occurs in workplaces when different tiers or departments within the company are unwilling to collaborate or share information.
About 50 business professionals attending the workshop learned that foundational principles on which a company is built – like its vision and mission, or organizational structure – can actually create division and boundaries within an organization.
Working in groups, attendees pinpointed several culprits within their own workplaces that lead to business silos.
Communication proved to be a recurring problem for organizations across the board from 10-employee companies to corporations that employ thousands.
“It falls to communication,” said Josh Hatch, who works with ConocoPhillips. “The organization has to put some forced communication in there. People have to work toward that. We had a lot of negativity in our company with layoffs, and it was a trying time, but they took a lot of upper layers and cast a lot of responsibility down. It’s a big shakeup time. Everyone’s trying to learn new roles and do things they haven’t done before. You do that by communication.”
In a separate session, Fort Lewis College professor Ryan Haaland and Juan Fernandez of ImageNet Consulting also delved into the Internet of Things, which refers to the network of “things” within the digital world that can independently collect and exchange data.
Haaland said engineers, including his own students, are developing robots, or devices that can function independently and collect data, which leaves humans in a “very vulnerable” position.
“Jobs aren’t safe, because I don’t think there’s one out there that can’t be done more reliably by a computer,” he said.
And as the Internet of Things sees exponential growth, Fernandez observed that a stigma is developing around social interaction for the digital generation.
“They back themselves into a social awkwardness,” he said. “They’d rather deal with an automated machine. It’s not that it’s convenient, but that they don’t want to deal with people.”
jpace@durangoherald.com
