A silo may be a great way to store grain, but if you apply this idea to your business, it can damage your operations as well as customer experience.
As an organization, you want your business to be sustainable, collaborative, and scalable. Unfortunately, one of the biggest barriers to building collaboration is silos.
What is a silo? And what does it have to do with bad business management?
The term “silo” comes from farmyards, where large containers are used to keep grain separate.
In business, organizational silos refer to the situation that occurs when team members from different departments don’t share important information or processes with other members because they are that isolated, exclusive, or remote.
This lack of knowledge sharing can impact workplace productivity and result in collaboration failures. A business structure like this leads to a silo mentality.
Silo mentality causes organizational barriers, hampers efficiency, and decreases team morale. That’s why around of executives and employees blame a lack of collaboration or bad communication for team problems and failures.
However, you can avoid silo thinking in corporate culture. The solution is to align different teams around a unified vision. You want your senior management and department managers to be on the same page so you can create a collaborative work environment.
In today’s blog post, we take a look at the silo mentality and how you can detect the early signs of it in your organization. Furthermore, we’ll also share seven proven strategies to help you break down the silo mindset and create a unified, empowered workplace.
7 Ways to Conquer Silo Mentality in Your Business
So, how can you break down silos in business?
Here are seven steps that will help you tackle the silo mentality. Done right, these measures can transform your workplace culture so that it is built for success in the modern age.
1. Nurture a Unified Vision
It’s quite common for your sales, marketing, and customer service teams to set goals that will benefit their respective department, and at the same time, conflict with another team’s goals. Silo mentality starts at the management level. Therefore, it’s up to department managers to co-operate and find ways of countering this problem.
By creating a unified vision that the entire workforce understands, the various teams in the company can build their objectives with that vision in mind.
This will build greater trust between teams, and help everyone adopt a big-picture view of goals, rather than only focusing on their own department.
2. Use Collaboration Tools
As the freelance revolution continues to grow, more companies are hiring remote workers. Some of these people will rarely if ever, be in the same office as each other. They may never meet in person.
With digital collaboration tools, you can unite remote teams, and foster smooth communications and workflows, even when your employees are scattered around the globe. For example, try introducing the following:
- Project management platforms – Preferably one with chat and commenting and real-time collaboration features, like Xebrio, Asana, or ClickUp.
- Shared documents – Google Docs and Google Sheets enable up to 100 people to collaborate on a live document at the same time.
- Data management tools – These can collate data from other platforms in regard to key initiatives and business objectives, so all teams are kept up-to-date with what actions and events in other teams.
By using collaborative tools that encourage regular information sharing and communication, all teams can work together, even if they are in different rooms, buildings, or countries.
3. Improve Socializing and Cooperation in the Workplace
With regular joint meetings and focus groups, all employees will have the chance to mingle with those from other teams. You can also run company events outside of working hours, such as a fun monthly excursion like bowling, hiking, or paintballing.
By giving different departments opportunities to interact and work together outside of work, you can improve cooperation and collaboration in the workplace.
Read also: The Ultimate Guide to Cross-Functional Collaboration [+ Implementation]
4. Encourage Remote Work
Another great strategy to break down silos in business is to encourage remote working. Now that doesn’t mean you only have to work from home. You can work from anywhere.
All you need is a laptop and an internet connection to be connected to your company at all times.
Remote working allows you to work flexibly, empowering your employees as well as your business. Remote teams can work across different time zones, attend meetings virtually while traveling to see a prospect, or catch up on emails and chats even when they are on a business trip.
5. Define Shared Accountabilities
Once you nurture a unified vision, you need to translate it into the day-to-day behaviors of teams and individual employees. By defining shared accountabilities, you can pull your teams together instead of dividing them.
For instance, your company may tie the IT department’s accountabilities with those of other divisions to ensure more efficient use of in-house IT systems.
To further reduce silos in business, you can have two or more teams work together on a task that involves giving a joint presentation to senior management.
6. Set Common Goals
In order to beat the silo mentality, it is critical to determine the underlying issues that may be causing the ripple effect of silos. Often, companies identify several strategic goals and objectives for every department, however, it is imperative to define the single, qualitative focus that is common among all departments as the top priority.
Ensure that all employees are aware of this common goal and understand how they can contribute as individuals. You need to foster a holistic and big-picture view to encourage collaboration, teamwork, and eventually accomplish that common goal.
Read also: Operations Strategy: Definition, Elements, and Advantages
7. Create Cross-Functional Teams
Silo thinking tends to get deeply entrenched in corporate culture. You can break the silo mentality by encouraging cross-functionality across departments.
If your marketing team has frequent training sessions, you could involve your sales and customer service teams as well. Such an exercise has the benefit of encouraging different perspectives and skills.
We recommend a ‘shadowing’ scheme, as well. Employees can experience the workings of different roles within the same company and learn new skills. You also build unity among different divisions which in turn benefits the organization as a whole.
How EngageBay Can Help You Defeat Silo Mentality
To stay competitive and relevant in the digital age, companies must rethink how they structure their teams and workflows. Your business should adapt and transform as per digital acceleration.
Unfortunately, the efforts at transformation can fall short because there is a disparity within the organization. The silo mentality hampers agility and derails business operations.
If you want to make long-term improvements to your operations, you will need a digital software solution that is scalable and intuitive.
Here are a few ways that business silos develop, and how EngageBay helps to reduce them.
1. Lack of cross-functional collaboration
How EngageBay helps: As EngageBay offers a host of tools for project management, data analysis, and marketing automation, your business can soon feel the benefits of breaking down silos.
The whole idea behind starting EngageBay was to help business owners streamline all business processes and get everything done from one platform, instead of shuttling between a million different apps.
EngageBay integrated sales, marketing, and customer service processes seamlessly, and makes collaboration super easy for managers and employees across departments. In fact, those who’ve used EngageBay love it so much that they often only leave 5-star reviews.
2. No actionable insights for customer service teams
How EngageBay helps: With a customer relationship management (CRM) platform, you can use data-driven insights to guide your sales, marketing, and customer service teams. EngageBay has several innovative features that improve customer service, such as:
- Ticketing – so everyone can track the status and actions in a customer issue.
- Feedback forms – to help improve the product or service.
- Knowledge Base – to provide customers with easy access to key information.
These features make it easier for every team to track the customer journey.
3. Different Communication Styles & Cultures
How EngageBay helps: Every team member functions and communicates differently. It can be difficult navigating different communication styles but EngageBay makes it easy to interact with team members.
EngageBay’s employee engagement functionality ensures that every team member is sufficiently motivated and engaged. You can gamify leaderboards, offer instant rewards, and boost team morale while also increasing revenue.
4. Every team uses specific collaboration tools for their workflows
How EngageBay helps: In addition to the many features of EngageBay, you can use Zapier integrations to use your favorite digital tools. There are 1,500 apps currently available for your business to use, including Google Docs, Asana, Gmail, HubSpot, and Mailchimp.
5. Leadership team and senior managers are not on the same page
How EngageBay helps: EngageBay helps you break down the hierarchy silos. Generally, top-level management and team members often find themselves at odds — the agenda isn’t clear, there is no clear flow of information, lack of feedback, etc.
As we’ve already mentioned, the silos mentality starts at the upper levels of the company — which is why management’s top priority should be effective communication. To achieve it, leaders’ communication style should be short, straightforward, constructive, and frequent.
With EngageBay’s common dashboard, you can structure content and reports concisely and reduce the incidence of fragmented data storage.
This builds the organization’s efficiency and enhances trust among competing departments. Leadership teams can also make better, more informed decisions, and encourage a free flow of information.
Read also: Everything You Should Know About CRM Integrations
Elon Musk on Silo Mentality!
Feel free to accuse your colleagues of silo mentality if they are reluctant to share information and resources with you just because they are from a different department or unit within the same organization. Remind them that a silo mentality reduces any company’s overall efficiency and sometimes even leads to a damaged corporate culture.
Also known as silo thinking and silo vision, silo mentality generally occurs in multi-department businesses and large organizations. Another cause is when organizations fail to adapt to the changing landscape of the workplace culture. The lack of a unified leadership team can also lead to a silo mentality.
If your team members don’t feel like it’s their responsibility to communicate with other colleagues, you’ll soon have an insular workplace.
A silo mindset or silo thinking can also develop due to other practical reasons. A complex organizational structure or a strict hierarchy can lead to departmental silos.
A lack of communication erodes cohesion and unity, which invariably has a negative impact on the culture and productivity of the organization as a whole.
Enough said, here’s Elon Musk on the perils of silo mentality in an email to Tesla employees and managers:
3 Early Signs of Silo Mentality in Business
Silos often form unintentionally. When an organization is growing, it’s natural that individual employees focus on improving their processes and skillsets. However, these processes can be incompatible with other departments – which leads to silo thinking.
Research indicates as many as 40% of employees believe different departments in their company have a separate agenda, and just 29% claim reaching their customers is a truly collaborative process between all teams in the business.
So, how do you identify the silo mentality in your organization? Here are a few warning signs to watch out for:
1. Broken Customer Experience
Silo thinking leads to department managers creating teams and business units that only focus on optimizing their processes. These processes can sometimes be at odds with other teams’ agendas and that can lead to miscommunication.
For example, without adequate communication, technology, and data, you’ll struggle to map the customer journey. This inevitably makes it much more difficult to convince prospects to become customers.
You may also lose out on opportunities for cross-selling if your sales and marketing agendas are not aligned. This has a negative impact on the customer experience, and may even deter people from returning to your business.
2. Duplicated Work
It’s a major red flag if you discover several teams repeating each other’s tasks. When two teams both think it was their responsibility, it highlights an obvious lack of communication.
If two departments aren’t sharing information with others, then chances are they’re not learning from the other’s mistakes. Additionally, the silo mentality also causes a disparity between different teams and that leads to inefficiency and low productivity.
3. Groupthink
Ideally, great leadership will produce more leaders. In reality, the best efforts to inspire individuality and free thought usually end up producing more followers. This creates a tightly-knit group that values harmony above critical evaluation.
This leads to groupthink, where disagreement or challenges are discouraged, and individual group members simply follow the leader. When this happens, your team is left open to blind spots and may resist any outside input.
Groupthink also delays innovation and experimentation, so you’re stuck in the same inefficient ways of operating and that’s no good for the business.
4 Benefits of Breaking Down Silo Mentality in Business
Breaking down the silo mentality helps create trust between teams and builds a path to sustained growth and profitability. Let’s look at the top four benefits in detail.
1. Encourages Collaboration 2. Reduces Duplicated Work 3. Improves Knowledge Retention 4. Facilitates Continuous Productivity
Encourages Collaboration
Silos form when people fall into the habit of only communicating with people in their respective departments. If sales and marketing teams don’t talk enough, both departments can feel the effects.
Using collaboration tools like a company intranet system can help everyone stay in touch, even across departments. This makes it easier for senior and department managers to get important feedback, and it facilitates a culture of shared information.
Reduces Duplicated Work
With this sharing culture, people will be more likely to communicate about their processes and daily tasks. This reduces the chance of tasks being repeated, which in turn, can save your company time, effort, and money.
Furthermore, if a team discovers a more efficient process and shares that information, other teams can replicate the same. This increases productivity and cross-functional collaboration.
Improves Knowledge Retention
It’s good for your workforce to develop a broader understanding of the different aspects and areas involved in the business.
By creating knowledge management systems online, you can offer more information and resources to everyone in the workforce. That way, there’s more chance the right information will always be available at the right time.
Facilitates Continuous Productivity
When your team is working together, it will be more effective. The onus is on C-suite members and managers to encourage this open culture in the workforce, where everyone communicates with everyone else.
When this is in full flow, with the right software and tools to help, you will have a seamless, streamlined organization that is optimized for productivity.
Wrap Up
Whether you’re restructuring your business or adapting to market changes, the silo mentality can be a major issue. An all-in-one business software solution can help with managing your organizational silos in a way that the right balance is achieved.
You need a robust Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system to empower your sales, marketing, and customer service teams, and encourage them to work together. A platform like this makes communication easy, transparent, and quick. It also helps your teams provide personalized, high-value service to all your customers.
EngageBay’s CRM solution offers robust tools that essentially function as your front office. You get a holistic, 360-degree dashboard view of all your operations — marketing, sales, and customer support — to help you make the right decisions and deliver exceptional customer service.
If you’re still unclear on how a CRM solution can help break the silo mentality, just reach out to us by signing up (for free) and we’ll schedule a quick demo and walkthrough to take your business in the right direction.
thankfully none of my employees have a silo mentality. But I didn’t know the effects would be this severe. I need to take better care of it. Thanks for the article.