Silo SeeSaw
We all teach that trust is the foundation of group development. Many of us focus on trust as a building block and the resulting negative effect of a lack of trust. Put a individual in the group who can not be trusted and the group dynamics go negative. Dysfunction takes over and until you remove the distrustful person, well.. it is a mess. The same problem exists at a greater level in organizations and is exhibited in silo mentality. If you have one unit in your organizational structure which takes on a silo mentality, it creates an organizational culture of distrust.. and dysfunction takes over. Now, you can fire an employee who is distrustful, but you can not eliminate a structural unit in your organization. I have seen two approaches to dealing with this effect:
-Reorganize the structure to encourage less silo mementality This is the most often used approach from my experience, but one that rarely works. Silos are a creation of human behavior, not structure. Structure can influence who successful as a silo builder, but the root cause of silos goes to individual leaders who love building kingdoms.
-Get the right leaders. Leaders need to work at the organizational level. They need to focus on organizational goals, but also they must buy into their unit's role in that journey. More importantly, leaders have to want everyone to be successful, especially employees not in their unit. Sometimes, choosing an organizationally committed employee over a more accomplished person leads to higher performance. Just like hiring a trusting employee leads to better teams.
And the truth is that these sort of leaders are rare. Face it, you employees are competiting with other leaders for the next promotion... It takes a great deal of maturity to put your own career second to the organizational goals. In a sense, that is what great leaders do.
The impact of silos on your bottom line is huge, but hard to measure. Much like the distrustful team member, silos inpact everyone's productivity. You can't measure the passive behavior that results in less productivity. I once sat with a senior leader who refused to share with her peers an approach to teaching because she was so intent on making her division the best. She actually would hide answers to problems from her peers... ouch.. silos rained on the entire organization and she was the center of the universe. which is what she wanted. But the universe could have been so much bigger...
What's the leadership message.. leadership has to be more than making yourself or your unit the best. Leaders have to look beyond their own ambitions and seek in a humble way to grow the entire organization. In a world where we have been taught to compete head to head, we have to learn as we move into leading others, we compete less.. and support more.
Posted at 06:57AM Aug 16, 2006 by mowen in General |