In our work with business leaders around the globe, one topic persists regardless of geography or industry: the so-called “silos.” The term represents the closed-group mentality that impedes a business’s ability to coordinate, innovate and be more agile, which are three criteria for competing with disruptive movements in today’s marketplace. Teams around the world are challenged by silos and struggle with figuring out how to break them down to improve communication, coordination and effectiveness in their organizations.
The good news? Just as walls can be built between teams to form the silos, the walls can also be torn down.
Before breaking down silos and other barriers to cross-group collaboration, we first have to understand why silos exist in the first place. Managers and business leaders say silos exist and persist within organizations today because of four reasons:
1. Knowledge and Certainty – Team members within a silo come to believe that they hold specific knowledge that is well known and understood within their silo and is not understood outside of the silo. Their silo provides a safe place for their knowledge and certainty of how things should be done. Others outside of the silo “don’t get it” or don’t know.
2. Belonging and Shared Purpose – Silos are often small communities with their own micro-cultures within the larger organization. The teams within each silo often have a clear, shared purpose that provides a sense of belonging. Associating one’s place and identity in an organization is much easier with silos than without.
3. Fear and Scarcity – Fear plays a big role in the existence of silos. People fear a loss of perceived control over an area they are responsible for. We tend to believe that resources and knowledge are limited and even scarce. As a result, we try to protect the resources and knowledge of the silo for fear that they will be compromised or taken over by “outsiders.”
4. Lack of Control – Many leaders believe it is easier to get things done by running the smaller world of the silo than to take a more holistic approach that integrates the silos. They see it as fewer people to have to coordinate with, fewer opinions involved in decision making, and faster cycles.
Now that we know why silos exist, we can learn how to replace them with new and better ways of working. New mental models will help us integrate people, ideas and action across multiple teams while making our organizations more flexible in responding to challenges.
Here are five ways to break down silos and the walls between us at work:
1. Shift from Certainty to Curiosity – By definition, silos are discrete groups of people brought together under a common purpose who develop an expertise that adds value to the greater organization. That expertise should be fundamental to the organization’s ability to thrive. However, that same expertise often results in rigid certainty where the silo believes it is the owner of all knowledge about a particular subject. As such, team members are not naturally open to other groups who they believe have little or no experience in their area of expertise.
Busting the silo mentality requires keeping your expertise but combining it with the belief that other perspectives can be complimentary and valuable. So, therefore, we should be curious about the other perspectives and possibilities that may exist. Aware that all people and groups have blind spots, a mentality of openness and curiosity enables us to collaborate and create value with groups outside of our own. Ultimately, more diverse perspectives generate more effective results.
2. Expand Belonging and Share a Greater Purpose – In the old siloed mental model, teams would avoid sharing a larger purpose because they may perceive their individual contributions as less. However, in the same way that a common purpose binds a smaller group or silo together, identifying a shared purpose between groups can make working outside the silo easier and more meaningful.
It’s important to explore and determine the impact each role has with regards to supporting a larger purpose – one that is outside of the group where you work. For example, in a technology company, the internal engineering function serves the entire company and has the specific purpose of supporting employees and initiatives via access to and ease-of-use of the best technology. In the same company, the human resources department’s purpose is to recruit, develop and retain the best talent. For these two groups to work together effectively, each must look beyond their group’s purpose toward a larger, shared mission that they both relate to as individual contributors.
3. From Fear and Scarcity to Confidence and Abundance – Most groups within an organization work with a mindset of scarcity, which creates a competitive attitude toward talent, resources and budget and avoids risks and fears losing time and money. In contrast, a mindset of abundance believes there are always more resources available and, as such, seeks to build relationships and collaboration in order to realize more of what they seek. This is a mentality of thriving verses surviving.
Believing in abundance requires confidence in our capabilities (assuming the team is equipped with the right skills). Confidence allows us to see more opportunity with fewer constraints. High-performing teams push the boundaries of what others believe to be scarce—they see opportunities instead of problems. They see more instead of less. They believe in their ability to achieve new heights.
4. From a Lack of Control to Focusing on One’s Ability to Respond – In every situation at work, there are elements within our control and elements outside of our control. Silos often persist because we believe that elements outside of the silo are also outside of our control.
For example, interactions outside of the silo can be more challenging than relationships inside of the silo. This may be true for a variety of reasons including different views, beliefs, attitudes and education than those shared within the silo. And yet, within the complexity of people and relationships lies the greatest leverage for busting silos.
You can look at it this way: We know that processes clarify the actions people should take to fulfill a task. The clearer, more streamlined and agile the process, the better. Clear processes empower people to collaborate with focus. By exploring our ability to respond to the challenge of relationships outside of our silo, we can design processes and roadmaps to organize shared tasks. Ultimately, we’re creating an optimized approach to collaboration between groups.
Breaking Down Silos Starts with a Change in Mental Models
Silos exist because they support what we believe about ourselves, our work and our organization. When we believe we know something and others do not, we create silos. When we limit our shared purpose, we create silos. When we have a mindset of scarcity of resources, we create silos to compete for and protect our resources. When we seek to feel in control, we build walls that keep out whatever is outside of our control and, in turn, we create silos.
The answer to busting silos begins with shifting our beliefs about ourselves, our work and our organization. We should shift from seeking knowledge with certainty to building knowledge with curiosity, where we believe the input of others outside our silo can be complimentary and valuable. We should expand our purpose to be shared with others, thus bringing down walls between us and rallying the entire organization behind a common mission. We should build our skills and capabilities so that we are confident in them, empowering us to see abundance and opportunity verses fear and scarcity. Finally, by focusing on our ability to respond, we can expand our impact on others and on the task at hand, allowing silos to open so collaboration can flourish across departmental lines.
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