Cylinders of Excellence aka "Silos"

In this article, NPN board member and nonprofit coach Margo Kelly looks at the good and bad of organizational "silos". She offers tips on how to analyze your situation and to harness silos’ benefits while keeping their harmful effects at bay.

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CYLINDERS OF EXCELLENCE (aka SILOS)

Silos in the workplace are a common phenomenon. And while most of the articles

written about organizational silos focus on the negative, it’s useful to recognize that

silos do provide benefits – they encourage clear focus on the particular

responsibilities of a business unit and help ensure that work goes forward and

specific jobs get done. And there are times when a singular, laser focus on

achievement of an important outcome is a necessity requiring a siloed effort.

However, when silos become standard business practice or an integral part of

organizational culture, they can also sacrifice potential benefits and diminish the

potential of collaborative efforts and coordination. In addition, clients and important

stakeholders may become frustrated by needing to go from one department to

another to get answers or help and may experience (and describe!) your

organization as bureaucratic and uncoordinated. When silos become an obstacle to

effective customer service or to attaining break-through business goals, there are a

number of questions to ask and a number of approaches to consider.

First, the questions: why do silos develop and what perpetuates this way of

working? It’s important to acknowledge that there are at least two kinds of silos

because effective solutions depend on understanding the cause. The first kind of silo

can be described as intentional; and the second, for want of a better term, can be

called accidental.

Intentional silos develop when people believe they have something to protect – turf,

information, reputation, rewards or time – and see little or no benefit in, or reward

for, cross-functional communication or collaboration. In the case of intentional

silos, the organization in question may have a “strategic plan” but success in

achieving the goals contained in the plan can be achieved by single leader teams

with discrete business unit goals. Overarching organizational goals are often

nebulous and aspirational and don’t demand cross-functional efforts to achieve

them. If hard-working staff who are typically pressed for time, believe they can

meet or exceed expectations by relying on the people and resources close at hand,

there is little reason to expect them to reach across functional boundaries.

And, in many instances, senior management is complicit in encouraging silos by

focusing on rewards and recognition for individual contributors, by treating

mistakes harshly or publicly, by lack of transparency, poor cross-company

communication and by not placing a value on internal collaboration, communication

or coordination in their evaluation of managers and staff. If KPIs are narrowly

focused and boundaried by work unit production or outcomes and if

communications from the top are primarily vertical in nature, this sends a clearmessage about cultural norms and “how things are done around here”. Bright,

competent staff quickly figure out that there is no real incentive for focusing on

internal customers other than the management hierarchy, or for exploring the

uncertain value of cross-functional collaboration so they stick to their knitting, rely

on their business unit colleagues and on the priorities set by their manager.

Unintentional or accidental silos are less complicated and are typically the

consequence of geographic isolation combined with no ready or regular access to

other business units, to broader organizational forums or to mission reminders.

While this kind of silo is easier to address and overcome because staff may not be

intentionally protecting information, work products or turf, the results of accidental

silos are often identical to those that are more consciously adopted.

One of the most challenging situations I faced when I became COO was the number

of free-standing ‘circles of covered wagons’ that existed in the organization and the

astonishing number of cherished beliefs individual business units had about each

other. I certainly bore responsibility for some of them. As I dug deeper into a new

role, I was reminded of the caution that, “it ain’t what you don’t know that will kill

you; it’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so”. There was a history of

management affection (and reward) for ‘cylinders of excellence’, and an unfortunate

conviction that one way to highlight one’s excellence was to point out deficiencies

elsewhere. There was no shortage of incredibly skilled staff members but, as noted

in something I read at the time, “individual brilliance can lead to collective

stupidity”.

The fact of the matter is, silos encourage localized, disconnected decision-making

and enhance the likelihood that, “anything that can go wrong, will go wrong at the

worst possible moment over and over again”. (Murphy’s Law). The janitor at NASA

who responded to the question, “What’s your job”, by saying, “My job is to put a man

on the moon”, probably represents an unrealistic fantasy for those who are

committed to increasing internal communication, coordination and collaboration.

But the chances of silo development can be reduced and the continuation of existing

silos can be addressed by several sustained and intentional practices. It’s important

to recognize and accept the fact that these practices need to become part of the

culture of the organization – not a one-time effort or employed only when silos

produce undesirable consequences.

Getting to Know You

In Achieving Excellence, we focus in the early days on ‘story’, starting with the story

of I, the story of Us and the story of Us Now. Creating an organization-wide forum

where every staff member shares his or her story of I, can be a remarkable

experience. Several AE grads have done this and report that it has had a huge

impact on their staff and established sincere mutual respect and understanding that

prevailed long after the exercise. They’ve reported that the exercise gave staff a

sense of their colleagues’ history and motivation as well as their commitment to theorganization’s mission – not the kind of information that is typically shared in casual

conversation.

Mission Reminders

In the nonprofit world, many staff are drawn to an organization because of its

mission. Nonetheless, we are all subject to becoming buried in the weeds, distracted

by organizational politics, work project anxieties or mixed messages. Periodic staff

meetings where the focus is not on the immediate work, but rather on the

challenges faced by the constituents the organization is dedicated to, can remind

people that they are all there for the same reason – and can help transcend the value

placed on functional boundaries.

Intentional Management Strategies

There are times when single-leader teams are critical. But according to Doug Smith,

in The Discipline of Teams, there are also, in every organization, the opportunities

for real teamwork – i.e., the desired outcome can’t be achieved without exceeding

the sum of individual goals. Managers can powerfully affect cross-functional

collaboration by establishing meaningful goals or projects, requiring the

involvement of multiple functional units, requiring mutual as well as individual

accountability and the achievement of outcomes that are mostly the result of

collective or joint effort.

Managers need to walk the walk. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that reflect the

priority (and the expectation) of cross-functional efforts and collective products

send a very clear and tangible message. Performance evaluations that assess staff

effectiveness in working across boundaries and functions and ensure that their

success in doing so is part of regular feedback (and as meaningfully rewarded as

other performance elements), also establish this way of working as an intentional

part of the organization’s culture.

Another critical indicator is how the CEO and his/her E-Team communicate across

the organization. If communication from the top is most often vertical, a standard is

established about “who talks to whom”, and hierarchy is reinforced as a value. And

the message can – and is - often dissipated or lost if, for whatever reason, managers

down the line elect not to share it with their direct reports (a much more common

occurrence than executive management realizes).

Reinforcing Best Practice and Regularly Asking Questions

Collaboration means aligning goals and resources with others in real time to achieve

agreed upon outcomes. Ron Ashkenas in HBR, describes this as mapping an end-to-

end work plan that achieves a key goal by creating a critical path identifying what

each collaborator or business unit needs to contribute. All collaborators need to be

invited to make adjustments to the plan and to make a solid commitment to

outcomes and deadlines. This kind of collaboration across organizational functions

can reap huge benefits for an organization when everyone realizes the value of the

outcomes achieved. Part of the job of Executive management is to support,acknowledge and applaud this work where it occurs, conveying a desire to make

this more of a rule than an exception.

When you are considering strategies to break down or discourage work silos, there

are a number of questions you should consider:

1. What caused silos to develop?

• Silos develop over time not overnight. It may have started before your

time. Were there rewards or recognition for working this way? Were

there disincentives for cross-functional consultation or collaboration?

2. What about now?

• Is there anything you are doing/not doing that perpetuates peoples’

conviction that this is the best or the safest way to work? Public criticism?

Siloed goals? Rigid structures? Vertical communication?

• What have you tried so far? What seems to have helped? What hasn’t?

3. Who seems most invested in this way of working?

• What “works” for them; what rewards are they seeking or getting?

• Are they encouraging or confirming fears or assumptions others have in

resisting collaboration across business units?

• Considering their incentives/motivations, what are opportunities to send

and reinforce a different message?

4. Is there a leader/business unit that could set an inspiring example for

others? How might you initiate, encourage, publicly support and recognize

that effort?

In exploring with staff where collaborative efforts are likely to be most valued and

valuable, there are several questions to ask of them that can help identify promising

opportunities (For obvious reasons it’s wise to avoid language like “obstacles”,

“stonewalling”, “information hoarding”):

1. What priorities does your work unit have that don’t seem to be aligned with

the work of others?

2. What would help other units understand the importance of your priorities?

3. What information/intelligence do you have that could be useful to other

work units?

4. What information are you not getting from others that would be helpful to

you?

5. In what areas do you believe greater collaboration would be beneficial to the

organization?

None of this is magic and there is no single strategy that is likely to “fix” the

challenges presented by organizational silos. But each of these approaches if

employed consistently has the potential to make a meaningful difference.