Leaders do not bear the name because of position or titles. True leaders know they have two major roles to
play. These are leadership and management. Built within these two roles is an essential and critical skill known as problem solving. Leaders are made and evolve because they have relevant knowledge: in strategy, vision casting, people leadership and direction.
Decision making is one of leaders’ functions. A leader who cannot take decisive actions based on proper understanding of situation, context, culture and people must be ready to step down. In every organisation, decisions must be made in the interest of overall corporate goals. In our previous article we had already identified several reasons which can lead an organisation into running silo culture overtime. In most cases, this may not be planned but inability of leaders to pay close attention and details to the process and daily operation can be a cause.
Silo culture helps no one. Neither does it promote efficient running of a great organisation. To prevent this, the leader must be a cheerleader, great observer of people and actions as well as good relationship manager to be able to identify and correct attitudes which may not enhance corporate excellence irrespective of whether the outcome or output of such behaviour is delivering short term goals.
Every workplace consists of various departments with specific duties that contribute to its overall growth. However, each department is not meant to function as an isolated entity; there should be a culture of interwoven workspace relationships that cuts across every facet of the organisation to create work synergy and unity.
While silo culture is about raising individual or departmental champions, cross-silo culture is about democratising excellence and making sure everyone is carried along and victory is more of a shared commitment.
This combined productivity—which is the hallmark of every cross-silo leadership—cannot happen if there is no deliberate effort from leadership to break every silo barrier that may run within the organisation.
Silo barriers occur when the various arms that make up an establishment isolate themselves and focus on their unit growth rather than the overall growth of the system; where each sector of a workplace hoards information and seldom interacts with members of other departments.
This silo barrier is not built in a day; it is often as a result of accumulated isolation traits that have been left unchecked over time by the leadership. These traits are further transferred by existing employees to new additions and cemented through layer-upon-layer modelling.
When a department of a workplace is not concerned about the activities or growth of the other departments, this creates or reinforces a silo barrier. Suffice to say that the occurrence of silos is the beginning of unwarranted boundaries and closed communication that ultimately affects the smooth running of any organisation.
Each sector of the workplace now becomes an island of knowledge with limited collaboration, leading to a dearth of communication.
As a leader, breaking silo barriers should be one of your primary goals, one that is unending as long as you continue to steer the ship.
Success here will influence the long-term wellbeing of the organisation. What does a leader do when silo culture is gradually gaining upper hand? First, leaders need to be sure they properly identify the reasons and barriers for this.
Identifying the elephant in the room begins with close observation of the management team. When the leadership team does not demonstrate a shared vision, it causes a ripple effect by spreading to every sector of the workplace and causing loopholes that may cost the company.
With this done, it becomes easy for leaders to make strategic adjustments to disrupt the silo system and effect sweeping or straightforward changes that will promote a thriving workplace relationship.
Two, there is a need for urgent and repeated communication of the vision and overall goals of the organisation. Sometimes, employees and heads of units get carried away with daily schedules and forget what matters most.
This way, the company’s culture is preserved, and more bonding occurs among members of the different teams that make up the company. The goal of the above is to ensure the leader aims for and creates cross-silo activities that will bind everyone together as a team.
These cross-silo activities could also take the form of forming clusters that extend beyond members of the same team. When communication is not a barrier, silos are easily broken down and the workplace becomes a friendlier atmosphere to work in. Lunch meetings, special treats, team retreats, hangouts, and other fun activities that relieve the tension in the workplace should be introduced to encourage cross-silo behaviour
across the organisation.
Lastly, the leadership must encourage the participation of every unit head, managers, supervisors, or coordinators. Sometimes, silo formation starts from the leadership team. When leaders exhibit a “silo mentality”, it is mirrored in the people they lead. Because modelling is one of the fastest ways to learn anything, leaders at the workplace should be conscious of their activities, values, body language, and interaction with team members to avoid passing down the wrong message or values.
Every progress-oriented leader must emphasise the preferred company’s culture relentlessly until
it becomes ingrained in the daily habits of
every staff or member.
Once the unifying purpose of the organisation has been clearly spelt out, it guides the dealings of the employees moving forward. This gives everyone a paradigm shift and fresh perspective to see the critical positions they occupy as individuals and as a team, and how their actions affect the overall workplace performance.
Most importantly, it will reinforce the message that an arm of the organisation cannot grow the company alone; it requires the active and unified contribution of every sector.
The above should be followed up with promotion of collaborative tools and attitudes. Where there is a distance between the headquarters and the branches, online tools such as Slack, Asana, Google Keep, GoToMeeting, Trello and a lot more are highly recommended for breaking organisation silos and ensuring
horizontal communication across every arm of the workplace.
These tools foster cooperation, smooth spread of ideas, and everyone is kept in the loop of the various activities going on in every sector of the organization.
Sobande is a doctoral candidate in strategic leadership at
Regent University, Virginia Beach, USA
