How collaboratively is your organization working? If you are experiencing disconnect between individuals and/or teams, a lack of collaboration, or more specifically a siloed culture, you’re not alone.

Companies are made up of groups of individuals, often who are parts of teams and/or departments. It’s often easier to be focused on oneself and one’s own area of expertise, than it is to be focused on the broader team, department or organization. This often causes silos within a team and/or organization.

How can you effectively break down these silos? This tends to be an ongoing challenge for many, and not easy to change, however, it is possible. And, if breaking down silos becomes a focus, it’s important to communicate the benefits, not only for the organization, but for all involved. This entails a change initiative, which means you will have to bring people along to want to be a part of the change.

How To Work Toward Breaking Down Silos

Creating a clear vision and objectives is required. And with any change initiative, or change management process, clear, consistent and regular communication is necessary. Some helpful areas to communicate include:

• Acknowledging the current state and why it is not beneficial
• The vision – help people understand what it will look like to have a collaborative workplace
• The objectives and benefits to the individuals and to the organization as a whole
• How it will be possible to break down silos and the steps that it will take to achieve the stated vision (a roadmap of sorts)
• That everyone is needed to drive a successful and lasting change

In addition to communication and creating a vision and objectives, it’s important to focus on building relationships and connection. Depending on where the silos exist, it may be important to build individual relationships, or relationships between teams and/or departments. Curiosity is a very helpful tool in this effort. Curiosity to learn more about each other – for example, their function, their value, the problems they solve, how they impact business outcomes, etc. By learning about each other, it’s easier to identify how to best work together. For example, how can one team “fill in another team’s gaps”. And, by learning and identifying opportunities for improvement, individuals or teams will likely be incentivized to want to work more collaboratively.

What else have you found helpful in breaking down silos? How might you start to tackle this desired change? Curious to learn more? I work with individuals, teams and organizations helping them to work at their most optimal level, which often includes breaking down silos. Could you, your team, or your organization benefit from a focus in this area? Let’s connect.

With silo mentality, organizations lose their collaborative advantage as they are being over managed and under led. – Pearl Zhu