Walls get a bad rap. 

President Reagan famously challenged Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987 to “tear down this wall” while standing in front of Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate. And, while not quite rising to the infamy of the Iron Curtain, the barriers that create dreaded “silos” in our corporate and not-for-profit cultures have also fallen into disfavor in recent years.

But walls and, more precisely, building real walls can be a good thing. Read on, and I’ll tell you why.