Connecting Teams: Keys to Breaking Silos and Enhancing Synergy
#006 - 4 Tips to Foster Collaboration Between Departments.
In short:
The 3 types of silos
How silos form
3 tips to eliminate silos
Nowadays, organizations have dozens of technological tools for communication between their departments: emails, messaging platforms (such as Slack), video calls (like Zoom or Google Meet), etc.
Despite this, when I talk to managers or other leaders, a common challenge repeats itself: working in silos!
This phenomenon creates a huge barrier to collaboration and communication, which directly and negatively impacts the productivity of companies.
It's crucial to take care of these aspects because companies that communicate effectively are up to 25% more productive. Additionally, 86% of executives agree that poor collaboration and communication are causes of business failure.
In summary, collaboration and communication are important factors for achieving higher productivity, and breaking down silos is the first step.
What are silos? The 3 main types of business silos and their impacts:
Organizational silos: These describe the division of organizations into departments, sub-departments, and even sub-companies. They divide and pigeonhole different types of collaborators and skills as autonomous entities operationally, whose objective is to stay focused on their specific goals.
This becomes a problem when there is very little interaction or exchange of information between different departments.
Information silos: These are often the result of the aforementioned subdivision of work.
When communication between different functions breaks down, information is no longer shared properly and instead gets trapped within departments, often to the detriment of the organization as a whole.
Silo mentality: Silo mentality happens more at an individual level and is even more damaging than information silos because they are unexamined assumptions and entrenched thought patterns that influence daily decision-making within teams.
They result from departmental biases and information hoarding, and over time, they can lead to an isolated and closed way of thinking that is fatal to organizations.
Silos in general impact organizations and create strong resistance to change, making decision-making "very expensive" as it can cost up to 3% of annual profits, and they create a poor organizational culture, which impacts the bottom line as an engaged employee is 17% more productive.
How are silos formed and who builds them? Have you ever wondered how silos appear in the first place?
Silos are generally not intentional. They are not the work of one person. Instead, they arise due to a constellation of organizational problems, weak leadership, poor teamwork, personality clashes, and professional disagreements.
Communication hierarchies: As information trickles down from the management team, it may be filtered by toxic individuals who do not believe in what they are working on. This can stem from a distrust towards management, resulting in a failure to share information with people outside their departments. When this happens, lower-level employees have no idea what's going on in the rest of the company.
This type of mentality starts with professional disagreements and personality clashes. It ends with the eventual breakdown of information flows between departments, affecting the daily working conditions of individuals throughout the organization. And once the walls are up, it takes a lot of work to tear them down.
Misaligned management team: A conflicting leadership team is another reason silos emerge. If leaders cannot agree on the best course of action, continue down a path they don't believe in, or fail to communicate why a particular path is the right one, those (personal or professional) conflicts will spread among their teams.
This difficulty in addressing conflicts is often linked to a lack of psychological safety, which makes team members not feel confident to express what they really think and don't want to become vulnerable.
Excessive specialization: Silos can arise when specialization gets out of control. What starts with good intentions, forming autonomous departments around specific skills, goals, and projects, can become dysfunctional if departments hyper-focus only on their tasks and goals.
Extreme focus on a particular aspect of a company can lead to blind spots and a lack of knowledge and concern for what is happening outside of that department.
How to break silos: 3 tips for eliminating silos at work
It is important to detect and eliminate silos as soon as they appear, but it is even better to prevent them from forming in the first place. Here are some ways to prevent the formation of silos in the workplace:
Unify leadership: Fostering collaboration at work begins with leaders who communicate with each other and align on a common vision.
Senior management must be highly aligned and seen as a team of leaders rather than a group of leaders. Therefore, a team coaching process can have an infinite return on investment!
Additionally, these managers should work with middle leaders to support the overall vision and long-term goals of the company.
Create cross-functional teams: Cross-functional collaboration with members from different areas creates more dynamic, creative, and challenging work environments.
Access to varied perspectives means people are more likely to collaborate and solve problems. Workplaces that practice diversity and inclusion share information more freely, have greater resilience to challenges, and find solutions more quickly.
Educate, work, and train together: Training and teamwork build stronger work relationships and drive productivity.
Collaboration builds social connections, improves understanding, and promotes a sense of belonging for everyone.
When I organize leadership workshops, in addition to learning new skills, leaders get to know each other and this greatly fosters collaboration among them. Many times, they end up scheduling leader meetings to help each other with their leadership challenges, and this breaks down silos.
Building teams with strong communication skills takes time and effort. If your team has poor communication and collaboration skills, breaking down silos might be the answer, even if it is uncomfortable.
Although it is a challenging task, companies thrive when information flows and collaboration is encouraged. As departments and collaborators improve communication, you will see changes in attitude, team dynamics, productivity, and the well-being of both the company and its employees.
Hope that was useful!
Cheers,
Val
I’m Valentin Baron, Founding Partner at LeadnScale. We focus on building High Performing Teams through Headhunting & Coaching.
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