Organizational silos can lead to a silo mentality, ultimately segmenting knowledge within your institution and stifling collaboration. Even relatively minor silos can lead to catastrophic business consequences, so how do you defeat the silo mentality in your organization?
The Devastation of the Silo Mentality
Silo mentality is what happens when an organization becomes too segmented, with each department functioning as its own, separate mini business, with minimal collaborations and communications between those departments.
On the surface, this may seem like it could work out well for the organization, and admittedly, there are some advantages associated with it. But overall, the silo mentality hampers your productivity and your potential.
The biggest point of devastation from the silo mentality is the lack of collaboration between teams with different perspectives and experiences. The marketing department, sales department, and customer service department all have different experiences working with customers, and each of them has access to critically important data.
If left unable to share and collaborate with each other, each department is robbed of both information and action potential. It’s much better for these departments to work in unison, or at least in mutual support of each other.
Possible Solutions to Silo Issues
So what are the possible solutions to issues related to silos in your organization?
- Get some outside perspective. In many cases, silos begin to form because your organization is too insular or because groupthink has become dominant within an individual department. One possible solution here is to get some outside perspective. For example, you might work with a fractional CMO, an experienced marketing leader you can hire on a contractual basis to help you as a kind of consultant. Your fractional CMO might be able to identify potential cross-departmental issues, analyze the root causes, and devise a strategy for you to make corrections. In many cases, leaders outside your organization can see what’s going on inside your organization more clearly.
- Appoint strong leaders. Speaking of leaders, make sure you appoint strong leaders to each department in your organization, and ensure that those leaders know each other. Experience and competence in the job are extremely good for improving effectiveness, but you also need people who are skilled communicators and collaborators. Only when all of the leaders in your organization are on the same page in terms of ability and openness to collaboration will you be able to achieve peak productivity.
- Set an organizational vision. It’s a good idea to set some kind of organizational vision in place. At the highest level, what is your organization trying to accomplish? What are the values and objectives that are going to help you get there? What should all of your departments be aligned on, and what are you all collaborating toward? These are big questions, and you should be able to answer them if you want your departmental heads to be in alignment with each other. This will also make it clearer when multiple departments must coordinate and work together to accomplish a shared objective.
- Decentralize your operations. Decentralization is quickly becoming a dominant standard for organizations. There are many advantages to this fractured, unbureaucratic approach. It allows individuals to have more autonomy and flexibility in the work they perform on a regular basis, it eliminates authoritative hierarchies, and it accelerates decision making, allowing for greater productivity and, in many cases, superior performance. Decentralization is also a way to break down barriers that might otherwise stand between departments within your organization.
- Create hybrid roles. It’s much easier to navigate the gaps between departments when you have individuals who represent both departments simultaneously. If you create hybrid roles that exist to serve two departments at once, you’ll have an automatic liaison who can work to accomplish the shared objectives of both.
- Facilitate cross training. Cross training is another way to address silos in your organization, as it gives people more exposure to other departments and other sets of responsibilities. Consider instituting more policies to encourage cross-departmental development.
- Encourage more frequent communication. Communication is key if you want your departments to work together effectively. Accordingly, you should encourage and reward more frequent communication between departments, and especially between department leaders. Opening up new channels of communication, holding more cross-departmental meetings, and even structuring your organization in a way that facilitates more incidental communication can all be beneficial.
- Use surveys to gather data. Finally, consider using surveys to gather feedback and data that can tell you how well your strategy is working. You’ll likely need to continue making adjustments in the future.
Silo mentality is an insidious, invasive problem. But it’s one with many potential solutions. As soon as you begin to notice silo issues arising in your organization, work swiftly to employ these measures and others to eradicate it.
