In the last post, we discussed how to make your organization more cohesive in a time of deep divisiveness. This post covers a related topic: how to recognize and stop siloing.
(For those not in the know, the meaning of siloing has to do with isolation—something that negatively impacts communication between teams and leadership.) The issues are similar, but there’s an important difference.
Cohesiveness is about nurturing a sense of unity among team members despite their different beliefs and values. The dynamics are more personal in nature.
Siloing, at least in the way we’ll discuss it here, is more about dysfunction within an organization’s structure—i.e., a lack of cohesiveness between divisions or units. Its symptoms are territorialism and knowledge-hoarding, organizational fragmentation, poor information flows, and misaligned incentives.
It’s “me” or “my team,” not “us” or “those people.” In the most benign version, silos simply fail to acknowledge that work needs to be coordinated across the organization, not just within teams or divisions. The vertical, hierarchical nature of most organizations makes having a horizontal view of how things actually work difficult, if not impossible.
By their very nature, organizations are places of siloing by default. Every single team member, to a person, has their own goals and opinions (often strong!) on the best way of achieving them. The larger and more complex organizations get, and the more official and unofficial divisions they have, the more coordination needs to be contended with.
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This is just reality. Centrifugal force is natural. Centripetal force requires intention. Coming together to advance common objectives, obligations, and capabilities demands risk. It requires the exchange of our egos, our “way,” our turf, for the hope that, together, something better will result.
So in a world where useless, cheesy team-building abounds, and where careers are built on making yourself stand apart from others, how can we promote close team member and division coordination over time? How do we put the brakes on organizational fragmentation and truly bring all divisions of an organization together?
It’s probably not surprising that over the years our company has given these questions quite a bit of thought. After plenty of debate and discussion, we’ve settled on a few core ideas. All of them have to do with relationships.
After all, what is siloing but a breakdown in getting along at the macro level? The next time you find yourself in the thick of a cross-division communication breakdown—whether involving you or someone else—consider the following advice.
"Listening moves us closer, it helps us become more whole, more healthy, more holy. Not listening creates fragmentation, and fragmentation is the root of all suffering."
– Margaret J. Wheatley
Break Through Siloing: Stop Going At It Alone
Few things can accelerate siloing faster than keeping team members and divisions cocooned in their own bubbles. While giving your people autonomy is empowering and an important sign of trust, even the most independent workers have a responsibility to keep everyone in the loop, especially management.
In too many organizations, the left hand has no idea what the right one is doing or planning. But being out of sync can be dangerous, as it risks steering the company away from its core goals and, when a reckoning happens, making existing divisions even worse.
Combat siloing, disrupted relationships, and poor information-sharing with these blogs:
Siloing in business is like flying without instruments: you may be okay when things are going smoothly, but a little turbulence is guaranteed to end in disaster.
Keep Communication Lines Open—Eeven When It’s Hard
Fragmented organizational structures too often lead to relationships built on suspicion. Obviously, none of this is good for company operations or morale. If people don’t trust each other, why would they try to help each other out or keep each other in the loop about a new issue or offering?
It’s easy to stay in touch when things are going great; it’s a lot harder when there’s tension. Regular contact between teams and divisions, even if grudging, may make it easier to reconcile when the right time comes. (Not to mention, if your people aren’t talking at all, problems that might have been quickly addressed can easily grow into full-blown crises.)
Put A Stop To Siloing: It Isn’t About Being Right., It’s About Making the Right Decision
Ultimately, the win-lose tally should start with your organization’s objectives results in mind—not yours and your department’s. In conversations about outcomes and decisions, reset the bar for how you will measure “success” and focus more on how you will measure the impact of your decision.
Define this first, and then make your choice. It’s easy for business fragmentation to occur when this order is reversed.
Tip
Employees will rarely volunteer that they feel like their team is fragmenting or siloing, especially when talking with a supervisor (aka, the person who signs their checks). A more reliable approach is to look out for symptoms of organizational fragmentation.
Messages getting lost, hostile interactions, atypically poor performance, and the like are all signs that something is breaking down.
Figure Out the Right Incentives
If team members speak up, how are they treated? Or they ignored—or worse? When members feel like their input isn’t wanted or valued, you can all but guarantee siloing will follow. Be vigilant about poor communication flows and misaligned incentives. If you discover either, work quickly to fix them.
Siloing is the inverse of unity: it takes a lot of deliberate effort to stop it, but very little (or none) to let it blossom. The sooner you start addressing it, the better off you’ll be—and the better your organization will perform, inside and out.