A few weeks ago, one of my readers left a comment on my blog asking why are there so many silos present in today’s organizations. Since replying to my reader’s query, I thought this would be a good topic to address as a follow-up to my previous piece where I shared a number of actionable steps organizations can implement to garner greater success from their collective efforts.

Now before I discuss how leaders can break down various internal silos that might be present in their organizations, let’s first look at why these silos are created in the first place.

Essentially, internal silos are created out of fear that if a mistake is found or some form of failure is encountered, the organization’s leadership will be interested primarily in finding someone to take the blame. As such, the various teams will isolate themselves to ensure they won’t get lumped with those who are within the leadership’s current focus of finger-pointing and blame.

The other reason silos take hold in organizations is because of that desire we all have to maintain a sense of familiarity; a ‘comfort zone’ that serves to provide feelings of order and consistency in the face of today’s fast-paced and ever-changing marketplace.

Within teams or departments, there is a given set of informal rules, a ‘way of doing things’ that creates this comfort zone because of its relative predictability. When teams have to co-ordinate with other teams or divisions, they find themselves having to deal with how others choose to do things. Sometimes, these differences can be trivial; other times though, they can become the source of an irrational line-in-the-sand battle between teams as they insist on maintaining their way of ‘how things are done around here’.

So what can leaders do to free their teams from these organizational silos? In order to answer that question, let’s look at the specific actions/behaviours which give rise to them in the first place and what measures leaders can take to counter them.

1. Encourage mistakes/failures as opportunities to learn and improve
If we recognize that one of the key reasons for the development of silos is the fear people naturally have for being blamed when things go wrong, the first step leaders need to take is to create an environment where employees are not blamed for failure. The most effective way is to treat failure as an opportunity to peel back the layers and understand why things went wrong in the first place, and what your team can do to ensure it doesn’t happen again.

Leaders can encourage such an attitude or perception within their teams by responding to such situations not by focusing on who was responsible for the problem. Instead, leaders should work with their employees to accurately assess the level of damage, what can be done in the short term to address the problem and what long-term measures they can implement to prevent its recurrence.

2. Communicate a common purpose across divisions
Another common fault for the persistence of organizational silos comes from how the various teams or departments ascribe value to the organization’s collective efforts.

For example, an organization’s R&D team will value efforts that help the organization create improvements or innovations to their product/service line to become or maintain their position as a leader in their industry. The marketing team, on the other hand, is more interested in efforts that help to increase their brand’s exposure and generate new conversations in the various social media outlets about their organization and what they do.

While both departments see inherent value in the creation of new products/services, where they diverge is in what each group defines as being the value from that collective effort. Although each department measures the value differently, ultimately both are seeking to accomplish the same thing – to create something of value for their customers by providing a solution to an existing problem (i.e., the R&D team’s contribution) and then educating their customers on how their offering will provide some improvement or satisfy some need (i.e., the marketing team’s contribution).

That’s why leaders need to communicate to the various departments that while they might differ on what they ascribe value to, their employees still share a common purpose through which they can work together in creating work that’s meaningful to all involved.

3. Redirect the team’s competitive spirit toward external targets
There’s no question that having a healthy competitive spirit in your team can be very beneficial for helping to build and maintain a sense of momentum or drive. Where problems arise, though, is when that sense of competition is directed at beating other teams in your organization. Often this is a result of a lack of appreciation or understanding for how the work being done by other teams impacts the organization’s shared goals or objectives. Consequently, it becomes easier for teams to trivialize the work being done by their colleagues.

As mentioned above, leaders play a critical role in helping the various teams to understand the big picture; of how the various efforts being made by the different teams serve to help the organization as a whole to succeed at remaining competitive in their particular industry. By providing the various teams with a clearer picture of how their efforts are interconnected, leaders can help their employees shift their competitive energies away from one another and towards those their organization is in real competition with.

4. Encourage greater flexibility within and between your teams
As I mentioned above, one of the reasons why silos take hold in organizations is in part due to the tendency of teams to fall into these comfort zones that offer a sense of familiarity, if not also keeping things safe.

When it comes to encouraging more flexibility at work, the focus shouldn’t simply be on how employees go about approaching their jobs. Rather, it should be encouraging team members to be more flexible and accepting of the conditions and resources given by those who they are meant to collaborate with. One way to achieve this is to remind employees that accepting these different approaches doesn’t mean we have to agree with them.

Instead, it means learning to appreciate how every team or department has their own way of doing things; approaches which serve to reinforce their own sense of familiarity and consistency that most of us value in our work environment. With this understanding, it becomes easier for different teams to collaborate as their combined focus will be on attaining their shared goal and not just on the means of how they will go about achieving it.

5. Build trust across your teams/departments
Perhaps the biggest casualty organizations suffer from the creation of internal silos is the loss of trust between teams or departments. After all, if employees from different groups in your organization are ill-informed about the contributions of other members, are afraid that other teams/departments will serve them up to be blamed when things go wrong, and/or if they feel they are in competition with one another for resources, recognition, or the perceived value they bring to their organization, it’s only natural that there will be feelings of wariness or suspicion about the motives of the other teams.

Of course, unlike the previous measures, building trust within your organization is not a short-term process. Rather, it’s something leaders need to commit to and encourage the adoption of by everyone in their organization over the long term. Indeed, by ensuring they fulfill the measures listed above consistently – irrespective of what conditions or challenges their organization faces – leaders can facilitate greater transparency and openness about the goals and motivations that drive the efforts being made by the various teams. This in turn will create an environment where employees can trust both those in leadership and those they collaborate with to focus their collective energies toward a common objective and desire to succeed.

Like weeds in a manicured garden, organizational silos don’t crop up overnight, but work their way in gradually over time, taking advantage of the vulnerabilities and gaps mentioned above that provide them with the ideal conditions to grow and take hold. And like weeds in a garden, if left unchecked, internal silos will suck precious resources away from what you’re trying to grow, weakening your teams’ efforts to make real progress toward achieving their shared goals.

Dealing with organizational silos early enough in their development will ensure that – like those pesky garden weeds – they’re easy to remove and paired with continual monitoring, will prevent their recurrence in what might otherwise be a well-managed organization.

Some other posts you may enjoy:

1. Are You Using These 4 Steps For Organizational Success?
2. 3 Steps To Help Ensure You’re Consistent With Your Message
3. A Springtime Reminder on Leadership, Communication, and Collaboration
4. Helping Employees Reconnect With Their Sense of Purpose
5. Why It’s Time to Rethink Your Company Brand’s Message
6. How Leaders Can Take Advantage of the Summer Downtime