Got Workplace Silos? Develop Your Leadership Skills 

Ever had the “If-I-only-had-a-nickel-for-every-time…” conversation? Inflation aside, the nickel-for-every-time thing for me is: A nickel for every time a work team complained about the “silos” challenge in their organization. When speaking of silos, typically workplaces are referring to the “I-am-only-interested-in-my-group” dynamics that occur between day shift and swing shift, or between sales and production, between administration and front-line service. Information isn’t shared, resources are hoarded, barriers are erected and business suffers.

As a guy who grew up in the Midwest, I tend to picture the silos on the side of the road, standing tall and proud, forever holding their contents against the environment. Other terms workers use to describe this dynamic are “Turf Wars,” “Camps,” “Pockets of Distrust,” “Togetherness vs. Otherness.”

Silos may be a natural and predictable phenomenon with work groups. They are certainly common. Are they always a bad thing? Probably not.

If we are not truly interdependent teams and are separate and distinct in our goals and outcomes, then silos are not a concern. Otherwise, as business leaders, we might want to work to overcome this challenge.

The first thing I was taught about overcoming silos from an Organizational Development perspective is to help groups understand their interdependence; how one group’s success impacts the other group’s success. Tearing down silos is particularly difficult if we cannot impress upon the work teams that this interdependence—driving their collective success—truly exists.

And we are encouraged to consider how barriers get set up between teams. One phenomenon to pay attention to is how, in order to simplify our complicated worlds, humans follow a progression that looks something like this: Categorization—Social Identification—Social Comparison—Judgement—Labeling—SILOING. You remember how we set up the categories of kids in high school: nerds, athletes, the “cool group.” You get the idea. This is a process that, at its worst, leads to siloing and profiling. WE ARE BETTER THAN THIS! We have outlived any evolutionary usefulness for these tendencies.

Future-oriented conversations can have a positive impact on deconstructing this phenomenon. Here are some things you might be observing in your workplace that contribute to silo development and maintenance:

People are busy. Teams are too busy to step back and see how the siloing disconnect is an important business and strategic issue. Find ways to encourage your work groups to step back and think beyond the moment.

Competition. We have seen some groups harness this competition as a positive energy, encouraging teams to push each other while appreciating that our sacrifices for the other team might get us all further ahead. (BTW, this is really fun to observe.)

Some groups are not really interdependent.  Even though most of us appreciate teams supporting each other, sometimes they really don’t have that interdependence connection and are truly driving only their own success. Don’t push de-siloing unless you can truly demonstrate interdependence.

Misguided incentives. Has your system set up rewards for individual achievement as opposed to larger system and team rewards? All of us respond, whatever our personal principles, to monetary or other reinforcement.

All of these challenges can be overcome with some intentionality, strategic planning, and a little nudging. Let’s build some bridges and use them! Better yet, let’s set up our workplace systems to discourage siloing. Please come join us for our dive-into-leadership conversations in our series on Developing Leadership Skills.

What are your silo stories? Have you found ways to deconstruct the barriers and bridge teams for greater collective success? Please let us know what is working for you.