Breaking Silos – Connecting People
Stepping across functional boundaries in siloed organizations makes you the enemy. What are you doing here? This is my turf.
Siloed organizations waste resources, squander opportunities, and duplicate effort.
7 signs your organization is siloed:
- The right hand duplicates what the left hand already did.
- Pockets of brilliance languish into collective ignorance.
- Resources are stockpiled, rather than leveraged by those who need them most.
- Success is defined by out-doing colleagues, rather than serving customers.
- Protective language is normal. “It’s not my problem.”
- Colleagues become enemies.
- Leaders run interference for big egos. Teammates take offense quickly and easily.
Siloed organizations focus on themselves more than customers.
4 ways to break silos:
#1. The process of change begins with imagination, moves to language, and finds expression in behaviors.
- Imagine a boundaryless organization. How are people talking, interacting, feeling, and performing?
- Identify and employ boundaryless language every day.
- Give power to cross-functional teams*.
Describe what you want in positive language. Bad-mouthing doesn’t build positive environments.
#2. Energize true believers. Don’t focus on skeptics, at first. Have hallway conversations with influencers. See whose eyes light up when you discuss the danger of silos and the power of highly collaborative organizations.
#3. Start a positive whisper campaign. Create shared language with true believers. How do boundaryless organizations talk to each other?
Adopt the same words. New language feels awkward at first. Use it anyway. Say what’s in your heart. If your heart agrees with the words, even if they feel awkward, use them. With time, new words will become second nature.
#4. Give power to cross-functional teams. Place a final decision-maker on all cross-functional teams. Eliminate the need to run decisions up the chain.
- Build consensus.
- Make the decision.
- Assign responsibilities.
- Set the follow-up meeting.
- Begin execution immediately.
Don’t make enemies of the people you’re trying to connect.
How might leaders build boundaryless organizations?
*Giving power to cross-functional teams is inspired by Jack Welch’s use of cross-functional teams at GE.
I’ve spent years trying to break down silos, and my success has been sporadic! An issue I’ve found is that the technical experts in each silo lack a common language and/or frame of reference.
Thanks Mitch. The words, “long haul” have been going through my mind. Thanks for identifying an important issue. You bring up one of several challenges. Marketing vs. Production. Management vs. employees. Administration vs. management. In the mix, customers suffer. Cheers
We’ve been playing around with this issue for dozens of years. The silos are seemingly caused by competitiveness, but supported by measurements and reward systems that do not support collaboration. “Interdepartmental collaboration” remains an issue (oxymoron, actually) because we structure things so that there are few shared measures of performance available. Feedback within the silo is restricted and not often actionable by more than an individual or a workgroup. Supervisors are pitted in a Darwinian mode, where only by making the others look bad / you look good can you move ahead.
It is shared goals and missions, shared measurements and feedback, elimination of extrinsic rewards for individual performance and things like these whereby one can begin to let the grain out of the silo and to allow the walls to collapse.
We drive a lot of the RIGHT behaviors through the debriefing of our Lost Dutchman game, where the goal is to mine as much gold as WE can but where tabletops choose to compete and win rather than collaborate and optimize. There are many resources and much information that could be shared, but tabletops tend to not collaborate much. In some cultures, they actually steal things from other teams to support their own performance results, really giving the overall ROI a big hit.
People need to change their behavior, the measurements, the rewards and the overall culture so that it supports mutual gain. All of us know more than any of us and the group pressure to maximize OVERALL performance results can be powerful. Implementing an ESOP or some kind of stock ownership plan for the overall organization/ everyone can be helpful. Having a REAL Mission and Vision that is inclusive to all can help. But changing measurements / rewards is a fast and easy way to move things forward.
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Dr. Simmerman,
You described perfectly my organization. My question is this type of behavior/attitude the majority? Seems so.
I cannot give much advise, only that YOU do what is right for the organization. But that often conflicts with “management.” I can tell lots of stories. The silos are pretty common, and MOST executives see them as an issue or even a problem since they dramatically restrict organizational responsiveness and flexibility.
But few do much about it. It takes SERIOUS COMMITMENT from the top to change organizational culture and many a new CEO has failed at that miserably. Research says it takes 3 years from the time the new cultural is IMPLEMENTED and a lot more work to actually do the design.
But a key part is to begin to define the negative impacts of the silos, and the impact on profits or growth or even survival. It is about alignment and commitment and collaboration. Not easy to implement ANY change, much less something this substantial.
Get the resume out there, so at least you can be fishing… Sucking it up is not a solution, but only a behavior.
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Thanks Dr. Scott. It’s always a pleasure to read your insights. Your observation that institutions tend to give lip service to collaboration and reward individual performance is the main reason organizational silos continue to exist. Frankly, there’s an advantage to being in a strong silo in many organizations.
The path out, can be implemented from any level, but as you indicate, top leadership’s endorsement, encouragement, and participation is essential. Of all the things organizations do, culture building most requires strong, disciplined leadership.
Having said that, my goal isn’t to take the steam out of middle or lower-level people. We can all influence the people closest to us. Every organization has pockets of excellence that owe more to departmental leadership than the folks at the top of organizations.
Ugh! I moved my life to join an organization where the GM always inspired me with his talks about the way he treats his employees when I watched him at conferences. Then I was hired as a middle manager by head management. Unfortunately, they hired me because another middle manager was not getting the job done. They hired me without this managers consent and when he threw a fit they said he can be my co-manager. This guy treated me like I was the enemy from the start. No mentoring, just ditched me, constantly reprimands me for policies I am not aware of, and undermined my authority with the staff that I now managed and was taken from him. It was very apparent his bad behavior was tolerated by upper management and I often wonder if they allow it because they don’t want to be the bad guy and they let this guy behave that way. I tired so hard to make this guy feel comfortable and secure but one year later and this guy still shuns me and does not let his staff interact with me. He preformed my annual review and stated 3 times that “everyone” keeps asking if I am here to take his job. I finally confronted my head manager about the issues. He assured me its not me its this manager and basically said he is afraid of this manager. I was shocked and asked what he was afraid of and he said being the enemy. Basically, this bad manager knows head management can not do his job therefore they are afraid of losing him. The bad manger knows I can do his job, although it was never my intention, and he admits openly he’s insecure. Leaving my position again looks bad on my resume and in my industry. I do not want to say I left a position because of management, every person we hire that discussed bad management in interviews the HR manager immediately says no to.
Any advise on what I can do? My spirit is broken. This is the first time in my career that I do not feel like part of the team, only with half the staff, but still. I worry about not getting a good reference if I leave the position, and my old GM being upset because he is friend with my current GM and gave me a great recommendation and will be upset I left this organization. Should I suck it up for 3-5 years, gain the management experience or move on. I fear this happening again where ever I go? I work in special government positions, Water Quality.
Sorry for the rant. Any advise would be greatly appreciated. 🙂
Thanks Michelle. It’s disappointing when this type of activity is tolerated. Thanks for ranting. 🙂
Culture is formed by behaviors we tolerate. That’s one reason culture building takes clarity, resolve, and courage.
I can’t say whether you should go or stay. The feel I get from your comment is that you feel you should stay.
In either case, this is a leadership challenge that will make you better if you learn how to navigate and thrive in this situation. I encourage you to forget your disappointment with others. It only drags you down. People disappoint.
Connect with someone outside your organization – a coach or mentor.
Find ways to deliver great value. Pulling back and not doing your best only hurts you. I know this is tough because the better you do, the more resistance you’ll encounter. How might you enhance the performance of others?
How might you meet the needs of those over you?
Pushing against people won’t take you where you want to go. What can you push for?
Since you’ve already discussed this with your head manager, work out a positive strategy with him/her that won’t make their life more difficult. Accept the fact that fear is motivating people’s behaviors. Don’t try to change them. Don’t complain about it.
I believe this situation will toughen your resilience, expand your capacity, and strengthen your character. Watch out for bitterness. It will poison everything you do.
On the other hand, it would be easier to look for a new job.
A further thought, distilled from years of varied success.
When the rewards that the teams and individuals get from co-operating exceed what they get from working in their silos, then they might work together.
Often, what happens when you break silos is that the reward comes to the organisation, and the individuals see no benefit.
The organisation makes more money, which they never see, and the silo dwellers lose their autonomy, sense of identity and kudos.
For seven years I have been trying to blow up silos. It can be exhausting and runs off fresh ideas and energetic thinkers. I have found that persistence pays off but you better have broad shoulders! History and “they way we always did it” are the arch enemy of silo busters.
Okay. Here is a framework. A client brought in 150 or so college interns every year for the Summer. Some of them were hired in, but most just got spread out across the organization. In the Orientation workshop, he used one of my team building games focused on inter-team collaboration (versus competition) and they played.
In the debriefing, the CEO took part of the time to talk about the silo issues that were rampant and implored them to break across the barriers, working with each other in the room to functionally improve communications between themselves as they solved problems or completed their other tasks. This was a KNOWN thing to all the managers and employees, that these people were being asked to improve collaboration across the company.
There were other things done, of course, but this was probably the most dramatic. The game was delivered at the start of the 3-day orientation / onboarding training and the interns involved were challenged to meet and know as many of their peers as they could and to have information about where they were going to be assigned, contact info, etc.
I thought it very clever when Terry told me about this four or five years into this initiative.
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Excellent advice! When I worked in innovation, these are exactly what we counseled!