The Problem: Silos
- Visualize It: Imagine each area of your organization walled off from the others. Alarming, right?
- Focus Issues: Departments focusing solely on their own objectives miss the mark on holistic alignment and desired outcomes.
- Misalignment: Different goals within silos lead to fragmented efforts, making it hard to hit the overall vision and customer/business outcomes.
- Resource Strain: With limited resources, focusing only on individual parts means the most crucial problems may be overlooked.
Key Insights
- Customer Problems: Most critical customer issues span multiple silos, functional areas, or departments.
- Missed Context: Solving problems within silos can ignore broader impacts and how other teams might address the same issues.
- Unintended Consequences: One area's solution can negatively affect another area without recognizing it.
The Solution: Cross-Functional Collaboration
1. Identify Critical Problems:
- Align organizational efforts with the vision and broader strategy.
- Determine the most important problems to solve as a unified organization.
2. Assemble Cross-Functional Teams:
- Combine diverse knowledge, skills, and domain expertise.
- Focus on solving customer problems collectively.
3. Leverage Organizational Knowledge:
- Utilize the learning, data, and expertise from leaders and teams throughout the organization.
A Case Study: COVID-19 Response
- Unified Mission: During COVID, the organization had to operate together towards specific customer and business outcomes.
- Clarity and Alignment: All employees knew what was needed to achieve objectives and track success metrics.
- Cross-Functional Teams: Leaders had no choice but to assemble these teams, empowering them to quickly understand and solve customer problems.
- Rapid Iterations: Unified focus enabled fast responses to evolving information and restrictions.
Post-COVID Challenge
- Return to Silos: Post-pandemic, many organizations reverted to silos, causing competing priorities and goals.
- Struggles Resurface: The ease of siloed operations led to the same old challenges.
Call to Action:
- Break Down Silos: For any organization aiming to thrive in a rapidly changing environment, it’s time to dismantle these silos again.
Written By Pam Krengel