eBusiness Weekly
Arthur Marara
One of the common issues that comes out from team building interventions is that of “working in silos”.
Most of the times this issue recurs despite team building exercises. What this means is that it is not another team building session that you need as a business leader. In fact some of the team building interventions are practically a waste of resources. I will share in a future articles, why some team building exercises are an exercise in futility.
What is silos mentality?
There are varied definitions of what is meant by silos. I will not go into this discourse. An elementary definition of silo mentality speaks to a situation when different teams or team members in the same company purposely don’t share valuable information with other members of the company.
This silo mind set hurts the unified vision of a business and deters long term goals from being accomplished. When there is a silos mentality, it is possible for people in the same organisation not to know what is happening in another department.
People are working in silos. By now you have an idea of what a silos mind set looks like. The question that we want to address this week is how can management break the silos at the workplace in a more positive way. Why single out management? It is because it is the role of the leadership in the organisation to shape the culture of the organisation.
Five tips to breaking down silo mentality
Co-operation, communication, and collaboration are the three keys to working across silos. Several effective strategies can help a company break down the silo mentality and improve these traits across divisions and even geographical areas.
1. Create a unified vision of team collaboration
Silo mentality begins with management. Often, divisions within an organisation set goals that benefit their department but conflict with the goals of another.
Each manager is focused on accomplishing their specific goals, and that focus frequently incentivises siloed information and creates resistance to sharing it across teams. To break down the silo mentality, department managers must have the vision that a free-flow of information will help the entire organisation.
The leadership team must buy in and understand the company’s long term goals, department objectives and key initiatives before passing the unified vision down to the teams. The unified leadership team will encourage trust, create empowerment, and break managers out of the “my department” mentality and into the “our organisation” mentality.
2. Work toward common goals using collaboration tools
A common problem of silo mentality is that people see things from their perspective and they are likely to make choices that protect their department rather than protecting the company as a whole.
To combat this challenge, each person in the organisation needs to work toward common goals. When people across the company have the same objectives, they are more likely to communicate better.
Executives need to state these common objectives frequently so they become part of the organisation’s culture. Each department’s division-specific goals should reflect the overall goals of the company.
Working together breaks down barriers to cooperation, communication and collaboration.
3. Educate, work, and train together
One way to break down silos is to educate, work, and train together in cross departmental exercises.
Because the organisation already figure training costs into their budgets, collaborative training across divisions is a way to dovetail required training with collaborative, silo-breaking practices.
In addition to collaborative training, the silo mentality can also be eradicated through inter-company interactions.
Holding a town hall to point out the dangers of silo mentality and outlining the plan to change the corporate culture to increase cooperation, communication and collaboration can go a long way in eliminating silos.
4. Communicate more often
The goal is not to destroy silos themselves but to eliminate resistance to share information. Managers may think that getting rid of silos is the answer, but the structure that silos bring is very important organisationally. They talk about the importance of communicating often.
In fostering collaboration among the different teams the organisation will be able to make better-informed decisions, serve customers better, and ultimately, increase sales.
5. Review/evaluate compensation plans
With motivation varying across teams and individuals, it is critical to find the best way to get everyone working together toward a common vision.
To emphasise the unified goal, the organisation may need to evaluate compensation plans.
If the compensation is designed to support siloed goals, the unified vision will not get buy-in from employees. Compensation should reflect the goals that everyone should be working to accomplish, and each person will be motivated to focus on those goals.
People will be motivated to collaborate, to communicate, and to cooperate when their take home pay gets involved.
6. Implement collaboration software
Sometimes, resistance to share information from others in the organisation occurs due to organisational inefficiency or simply because people don’t take the effort to update shared information.
A way to increase team collaboration would be by providing useful collaboration tools. One way to reduce the silo mentality is to use technology to your advantage, and use programmes and tools that exist to help the teams work together.
Deploying a tool that will comprehensively integrate information, enabling all teams with a new source of information as the glue that holds them together.
Arthur Marara is a corporate law attorney, keynote speaker, corporate and personal branding speaker commanding the stage with his delightful humour, raw energy, and wealth of life experiences.
In summary
Effective strategies that break down the silo mentality include creating a unified vision, working toward common goals, cross-department education, work, and training, communicating often evaluating compensation plans, and implementing a collaboration software.
A unified vision of company goals will turn damaging silo mentality into a culture where there is division of labour but not division of information.
Join me on Star FM on Wednesdays (09:40am-10:00am) for some moments of inspiration on the Breeze with V Candy.
Arthur Marara is a corporate law attorney, keynote speaker, corporate and personal branding speaker commanding the stage with his delightful humour, raw energy, and wealth of life experiences. He is a financial wellness expert and is passionate about addressing the issues of wellness, strategy and personal and professional development. Arthur is the author of “Toys for Adults” a thought provoking book on entrepreneurship, and “No one is Coming” a book that seeks to equip leaders to take charge. Send your feedback to [email protected] or Visit his website www.arthurmarara.com or contact him on WhatsApp: wa.me//263780055152 or call +263772467255.
