Almost every senior leader we talk to knows and doesn't like how people in their company often work separately. They see employees keeping to their own tasks, not exploring opportunities with other teams, and sometimes being selfish by protecting their areas or keeping things to themselves.
In a study on the impact of silos on 100 global businesses found that 80% were suffering from ‘strongly pronounced silos” which were negatively impacting their company’s costs, innovation potential, culture and profitability. This widespread and troubling issue is entirely curable with the right approach.
We've all heard the frustrated question, 'Why doesn't one part of the company know what the other is doing?' and the blame games that happen when things go wrong.
It’s easy for us to see the obvious downsides of people and teams working in isolation:
- Communication Breakdown. When teams don’t regularly talk, we can expect misunderstandings, duplication of efforts, and conflicts (see our case study further down for a typical example).
- Lack of Innovation. Collaboration across functions nurtures continuous improvement, without it we miss out on valuable insights and different perspectives which generate ideas and solutions.
- Inefficiency. There is an increased danger of ‘busy work’ as teams unknowingly duplicate efforts or work at cross-purposes, wasting time and resources.
- Poor Decision Making. Decisions made within silos don’t benefit from the fuller picture of consequences, risks and opportunities and so they may be easier to make, but are inherently less effective.
- Lack of Big Picture impact. When we focus on a narrow slice of the business, our objectives can become misaligned with other teams. It’s also more difficult to take a step back and see how what we do fits into the bigger picture, so we can feel a sense of accountability beyond our immediate team.
Whilst we might be frustrated by these ‘downsides’ there is a reason that silos develop, especially in big companies where there are some advantages in terms of specialisation and efficiency. But we don’t get anything of importance done in a large business on our own. Everything is achieved with and through other people and the cons of siloed behaviour far outweigh the pros.
If you’d like to know how to identify and address the problem of silos, and how to create team cultures of collaboration, accountability, and collective achievement, this article is for you. We explore where this behaviour comes from, so we can let go of judgment and explore how we can help people break out of unhelpful patterns and move forward together, achieving so much more than is possible within a silo.
If only we worked together more closely …
Large corporations have the potential to be thrilling, inventive, and well-equipped workplaces. They provide abundant chances for significant professional growth by bringing together skilled individuals to tackle customer challenges and generate value and progress.
In the optimal scenario, big companies serve as the crossroads between opportunities and resources. The finest large organizations foster strong team cultures where shared responsibility is actively encouraged, and everyone works together effortlessly across boundaries to achieve outcomes that go beyond individual influence.
However, the reality often falls short of this ideal.
Over the last 3 years we’ve worked with more than 500 leaders, diagnosing, and tackling the challenges in culture that hold businesses and individuals back from success. Through more than 3,000 hours of confidential conversations with leaders, we’ve uncovered the 5 Red Flags that stop individuals and teams achieving success and realising potential.
Siloed behaviour is one of these Red Flags and it puts a stranglehold on progress, keeping individuals and teams acting small and achieving less.
Instead of seamless collaboration and collective problem-solving, large businesses resemble patchwork quilts woven with siloed teams, each vying for resources and safeguarding their individual interests and achievements.
‘It’s different in our team’, is something we frequently hear people say with pride. It’s natural for teams to want to create a sense of belonging, separation, identity and individuality in their way of working. There’s an important benefit to this way of thinking: It provides a sense of belonging which is too often missing in large, complex organisations. The disadvantage, however, is of the very same strain; because we see ourselves as different, we don’t feel we are a part of something bigger, we feel separate.
This can result in both an overdeveloped sense of responsibility for our team and an underdeveloped sense of responsibility for the greater good of the company. With this comes ‘selfish’ behaviour that protects the good of the team, such as hoarding resources and withholding information. When teams are disconnected, they miss the bigger picture and become overly focused on the small stuff. The more exciting, bigger, joined up opportunities are missed.
Silos are often a response to complexity. Large companies are inherently complex. In regulated industries like finance and pharma, this complexity is amplified. Complexity hinders our own sense of control and limits our sense of agency in owning and driving our work. Delays through reliance on other teams create frustration. This can create siloed behaviour as we seek control.
At Nkuzi Change, we often say ‘culture is the 200 feet around us’ – because what we experience closest to us, on a daily basis, is how we experience our organisational culture. In big businesses the need to make sense of the scale and complexity of the business amplifies the importance of this ‘200 feet around us’.
As large organisations evolve and become specialised, teams inadvertently drift into working within cliques and silos. This tendency towards isolation hampers collaboration and limits accountability beyond the immediate scope, hindering the creation of cohesive, end-to-end value. And so, we end up with a series of siloed teams leading to poor collaboration and low accountability beyond our ‘200 feet’. And for big organisations, this behaviour is amplified as businesses scale and grow.
Change efforts are stymied by the presence of silos. In big companies we never get anything of any substance done on our own: Everything of value is achieved with and through other people, and in conjunction with other teams.
Our workflow is interconnected and there are baked in dependencies and handoffs between functions, teams and individuals. If something changes in our world it will always affect someone else’s workflow and the knock-on effects can be very disruptive. The more siloed teams are, the harder these interdependencies are to spot and manage - so when change happens, we usually experience it in a way that is unmanaged and chaotic - and this makes us change averse. And if we are personally disconnected from the people we rely on, and who rely on us, it’s easy to blame them when things go wrong.
How does the Silos Problem Show Up?
Depth not Breadth
Across a wide range of Financial Services organisations, we see a major problem that naturally emerges when deep technical expertise is hard won and therefore highly prized. Senior leaders have shared their concerns with us that their subject matter experts have developed depth at the expense of breadth: Specialists often display world class IQ and have a deep and expert knowledge of their own area, but they’re not working together or calling on each other for joined-up solutions. They often lack the confidence to engage clients in the wider commercial conversations and only think and collaborate within their own comfort zone.
This depth over breadth dilemma was first named by McKinsey who coined the concept of the I shaped expert vs the T shaped collaborator. We have built on this concept, and it has been very useful in helping us foster collaboration cultures in the teams we work with.
If you’re working in a large, complex organisation think about the company as a sphere, whose outer shell is where interaction with the outside world happens the most. The sphere itself is solid and made up of the people. Many leaders say, people are at the heart of the business, we would say people ARE the business. And these employees who make up the business take different roles and behave differently. Some people work mostly on the outside of the sphere, interacting with clients and suppliers. Others work on the inner mechanics of the business, deep in the core. It’s helpful to think of these different types of roles as having a different ‘shape’ in terms of how they engage with other people and the mechanics of the business. There are number of shapes that people take on when they work in large businesses – and the most common and useful to understand is I and Ts.
A very common shape for people to take is a capital I, where the top of the I is the narrow point of entry into their part of the sphere and the length of the I reaches deep into the core of the sphere. Their work and behaviour is focused, narrow and deep, they stretch deep into the mechanics of the organisation. They understand the complexities of their professional discipline and are expert at how the business works, but this understanding is limited within the zone of their expertise. Their natural behaviour is to work in a silo - individually and with their team.
In contrast, roles and people with T shape behaviour may also have a deep bench of expertise and understanding of the business - their reach into the centre of the business is just as deep. But they differ in terms of how they work with others. Imagine a person taking the shape of a capital T, with the top of the T being their outstretched arms reaching out to connect and work with their cross-functional colleagues. This means these teams and the individuals within them are better connected to those around them. They achieve more with and through others, and together they create a stronger structure. This in turn builds resilience, enabling them to move together and support each other, rather than knock each other down when pushed.
The impact of too many I shaped people and not enough Ts can be commercially catastrophic, especially during times of change. A business with this make up, lacks capability to cross-sell, to innovate, and to transform. We see this problem as alarmingly common, and that’s supported by research: One study of 300 organisations shows around a third of value-add collaboration comes from only 5% of employees.
Low Ownership for the Collective Result
Another indicator of siloed behaviour is a low sense of ownership for the collective result of the business unit or company. You might see people working hard, but they are working and thinking within a silo. No one feels responsible for the overall result. Whilst everyone feels accountable for their individual part, no one is comfortable having conversations about the collective impact.
When we work in silos, weak accountability towards each other and for the big picture is the result. It can feel like everyone is waiting for permission or explicit instruction, and no one wants to take charge and ‘own it’. There’s high risk aversion, and hardly any challenging conversations happening across functions. This environment hinders innovative and fosters a culture of blame rather than problem solving.
Blame and Defensiveness
A chorus of blame and frustration often emerges when teams are siloed with fingers pointing at 'that team over there,' the complexities of the matrix structure, and of course, the opt out of ‘we can’t double guess what everyone else is doing’ and ‘that’s above my pay grade’.
When we feel a close connection to our team, and our team only, we can be quick to blame and find fault in others. We’ll typically see a systemic failure, but fail to see our own part in it. This is when witch hunts are most prevalent as we seek to protect our own and defend our work.
Deference for subject matter expertise
When we prize our own expertise highly, we also tend to defer to others in their areas of specialisation and this can lead to not asking questions of curiosity or concern. We see a persists an assumption that others must 'know what they are doing,' deterring team members from venturing beyond their silos to pose challenging questions or change the current way of doing things. Of course, most people do know what they are doing, but none of us can be fully aware of the implications of our behaviour and actions and there is always room for improvement and change.
Individual Mavericks
Less evident, but often present is the impact of maverick behaviour—individuals who, in their frustration, believe they can single-handedly 'take on the system' and force change on their own. This is equally damaging as the passive silo approach. Neither the maverick, nor the teams who hold back, are on the road to success.
We've harnessed invaluable insights into common beliefs and behaviours through our programmes involving more than 500 middle and senior leaders within large businesses. We've distilled wisdom from 3,000+ hours of confidential conversations, to shed light on the factors that hinder individuals and teams and give rise to silos.
We’re pleased to share these insights and provide actionable advice to help you address this behaviour if you fear it may be holding your team back.
Understanding Silos: Why are our people acting this way?
Siloed thinking stems from a number of beliefs and behaviours often invisible to those outside of the team. These may be hard to spot, even for team members themselves, as overtime, they become part of the make up or culture of the team. These behaviours often go unchallenged and become deeply embedded in the way the team operates. The reasons people fall into these patterns differ from team to team, but we’ve spent thousands of hours talking with middle and senior leaders in big companies, and we see common themes emerging.
I’ve often heard frustration from senior leaders talking about people thinking and acting in silos: “Why are they not talking to each other? The left hand and the right hand aren’t working together, it’s so frustrating!”
But if we want to tackle this problem, we need to leave judgement behind.
First, we need to recognise that highly specialised, differentiated teams came about for good reason.
Silos are useful for efficiently scaling complex processes. Having specialised teams handle specific tasks reliably and cost-effectively has made sense for most of the last century. Silos have enabled the production of abundant, high-quality products. In stable and predictable times, they made perfect sense. The problem is they work against change. In a world of rapid and unpredictable market upheaval, silos present risk, as Behnam Tabrizi articulates brilliantly in his most recent book on innovation:
“Upheaval doesn’t happen in in a neat way; it affects activities throughout the organisation, and overcoming it requires rapidly collecting information, generating new ideas, and pivoting to exploit them.” (Tabrizi)
Second, we must see that siloed thinking is often a normal and rational response to uncertainty and to complexity. It’s natural to choose to work most closely with the people and problems we know best:
"In most organizations, collaboration takes enormous energy and positive thinking as well as courage. Employees have their set tasks and challenges, and collaboration is an option they can decline. Only people who are confident, ambitious, and, yes, energetic will make an effort to collaborate with someone outside of their group or division” Benham Tabrizi, Going on Offense
Strategies to Overcome Silos
I’ve also been guilty of adding to the chorus of judgement and disapproval in conversations about the challenge of silos. But studying the topic up close over has given me a new perspective – one that’s echoed by thought leaders like Behnam Tabrizi: Silos are a natural and perfectly rational human behaviour. We ALL tend to prioritise work and the relationships we already know, rather than boldly seeking out the new; especially when we’re tired or overwhelmed. This means silos will happen organically in every large organisation unless we work to actively shape a different approach:
“Ordinary, rational people would rather stick with the people they know, but companies that are perpetually innovative transcend that impulse” (Tabrizi)
Strategies to overcome Silos
- Clarity of Purpose and Connection to the Whole Company
Begin by establishing and reinforcing a clear understanding of the overall purpose of the business. Help team members see the integral role they play in achieving the big picture results. Foster an environment where everyone understands the direct connection between their individual contributions and the collective efforts of colleagues. By emphasising shared goals and interconnectedness of tasks, we are more likely to break out of our silos and work towards a unified purpose.
Develop team leader skills in joining the dots between individual motivation and organisational purpose. Leaders must foster people who are so ‘crazed with passion that they dare to work with others outside their silos’ (Tabrizi). When we feel a sense of belonging and identity with the whole company, the need for primary bonds within our silos is reduced. Encourage strong internal networks to unite in solving problems, fostering cross-functional collaboration and innovation.
- Top-Down Alignment:
Breaking down silos requires a concerted effort starting from the very top of the organisation. As Patrick Lencioni has conveyed so persuasively, senior leaders must be aligned in their vision and actively role model collaborative behaviours themselves. Leadership commitment to collaboration sets the tone for the rest of the organisation, promoting a culture of cooperation and interconnected success.
- Minimise Internal Competition:
Leaders too often set up their people to compete with each other. This is a tempting approach – in the short term it can generate energy and pace. But it KILLS trust and collaboration, so it will ultimately destroy success:
“There’s no single answer for cultivating collaboration, but one easy way to discourage it: internal competition… it shatters trust… Once people see colleagues as competitors, especially outside their silos, true collaboration ends” (Tabrizi)
- Focus on the Good of the Whole:
The mindset of the whole organisation must prioritise moving together to seek solutions for the good of the whole, ‘unhindered by structural or cultural constraints’ (Tabrizi). That means all of us caring more about the good of the whole than about our own personal interests, comfort, status and achievements.
A tall order- but it is possible. Tabrizi describes the culture at Tesla where expertise is valued more highly than seniority. Where all employees are expected to bypass silos and chain of command in order to fix problems, motivation is created to learn more and take more ownership for the best interests of the company.
- Encourage T-type behaviour:
“The T-shaped person is a metaphor to describe skills and knowledge. The vertical bar represents depth in specific fields. The horizontal bar represents ability to execute and collaborate in areas of other expertise.” Mitchell Platt, The Value of T Shaped People
McKinsey urges large organisations to nurture more T-shaped people who bring “domain knowledge, general technical fluency, project-management skills and entrepreneurial spirit” to bridge the gap between silos (Henke, Levine and McInerney in HBR, see sources).
Today’s customers, whether corporate or individual, seek integrated, innovative solutions that offer added value. However, beneath the surface of these solutions, there are teams of experts armed with yesterday’s tools and I shape behaviours often leads to a struggle in keeping pace with change. To address this challenge, leaders must look up and out and not just down within their silo.
This is where the T shape collaborator comes in. T shaped leaders possess deep expertise inherited from their I shaped background, but they also possess the ability to reach out and connect with other teams. They excel at bridging gaps, not only connecting existing dots but also identifying new dots that should be connected. T shaped leaders are indispensable throughout an enterprise. They see market opportunities, develop products and services, conceptualize and develop the necessary IT and backend systems, and reach out to new customers. Importantly, they guide their teams of I shaped experts towards new goals.
In Conclusion
Siloed thinking and behaviour is a common challenge that can become entrenched in organisational culture. At Nkuzi Change, we help teams tackle the common cultural challenges that get in the way of success. We help people and teams to take ownership for their individual and collective success. Most importantly, we help them to find the courage and build confidence to move forward together.
We have the evidence to show, with the right intervention you can achieve behaviour change in a matter of months, even in the most entrenched teams. We have a 12 week Culture Sprint focused specifically on this challenge of Moving Together.
We achieve a real shift in behaviour, in a way people enjoy, supporting them to break free from old habits and limiting beliefs and step into their full potential.
Our approach is practical and delivers impact. We focus on supporting the Sprinters to move their behaviours so they are actively driving change on a daily basis.
Culture Sprints redefine the traditional approach to culture change. We help teams centre their efforts on their specific challenges to deliver tangible shifts in behaviour. Say goodbye to long, ambiguous and draining processes and instead enjoy:
- Rapid Transformation: Achieve tangible results in just 12 weeks. We empower your team to create a real shift in behaviour together.
- Zero Distraction: We handle all logistics, freeing up your internal resources. Say goodbye to administrative burdens and distractions.
- Unleash Real Potential: Our approach targets common, unhelpful behaviours and is proven to deliver impactful results in a way your team will wholeheartedly embrace.
Culture Sprints are fast and budget-friendly, making it easier than ever to elevate your team's performance.
If you need your team to move together, contact me:
I’d love to explore if our Moving Together Culture Sprint is right for your team.
Moving from Silos to Moving Together is one of the 5 Culture Sprints we offer which are designed to combat the 5 Red Flags that stymie success in big companies.
For more on the 5 Red Flags and how we make real, sustained cultural change contact me today.
Sources
Benham Tabrizi, 2023, Going on Offense, A Leader’s Playbook for Perpetual Innovation.
How breaking "bad" silos can benefit your companies operations and overall business performance; Roland Berger: https://www.rolandberger.com/en/Insights/Publications/Breaking-bad-silos-starts-with-executive-and-employee-buy-in.html
Patrick Lencioni, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
The Value of T Shaped People, Mitchell Platt: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/value-t-shaped-people-mitchell-platt/
Why T Shaped People, Jason Yip: https://jchyip.medium.com/why-t-shaped-people-e8706198e437
Why T-Shaped Teams are the Future of Work, Lisa Bodell: https://www.forbes.com/sites/lisabodell/2020/08/28/futurethink-forecasts-t-shaped-teams-are-the-future-of-work/
Analytics translator: The new must-have role, HBR, Nicolaus Henke, Jordan Levine, and Paul McInerney: https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/quantumblack/our-insights/analytics-translator#0
Career Success Starts with a “T”, Katharine Brooks; Psychology Today: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/career-transitions/201204/career-success-starts-with-a-t
T-Shaped Skills, Helen Wale; CFI; https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/management/t-shaped-skills/
