How to Break Down Organizational Silos and Make Collaboration Happen
The relentless pace of change in the corporate world today requires organizational teams to work together to support a collaborative and innovative culture. However, the existence of complex hierarchies and matrixed reporting relationships often allows organizational silos to grow, which can impede the very collaboration the organization needs to thrive and remain competitive.
In a global survey of over 1,200 business leaders, 61 percent said that greater collaboration across functions was the key to reaching their strategic goals, despite the fact that more than half of them (55 percent) worked in silos. Silos can exist between departments or within them, becoming a part of your culture and weakening decision-making and process improvement capabilities. However, there are specific actions that can help dismantle organizational silos and allow teams to communicate and collaborate more effectively.
Establish a Unified Vision
A common vision that unites employees helps them see and understand expectations for working toward the same goal, instead of pursuing their own departmental or functional agenda. You can break down organizational silos and establish a vision for improved collaboration by:
- Defining what it means to be collaborative: People need to see and hear examples of expected collaborative behaviors. Therefore, it will be helpful to communicate the vision in writing, verbally, and through examples modeled by their leaders.
- Getting leaders on board: Use a combination of training, meetings, and one-on-one discussions to ensure departments and leaders at all levels are using the same language and engaging in collaborative behaviors that emphasize the importance of teamwork.
- Training employees: In some cases, you may need to provide training to improve collaborative skills and get everyone on the same page.
Bring Individuals and Teams Together
When individuals interact face-to-face to solve a particular problem, they have opportunities to share ideas and learn more about ways to overcome obstacles. For example, employee forums can be used to bring together individuals from different departments, geographies, and functions to solve real challenges they are facing in the organization, thus promoting cross-departmental collaboration.
You can also take steps to break down organizational silos by creating opportunities for people to get together who do not always work together. This gives them a chance to get to know each other as people with similar challenges, interests, or experiences, which translates into how they work together on the job. This can be done in a variety of formats. From a social dinner offsite to a training session that brings together new hires and trains them on the skills they all need to succeed regardless of department or function. Both situations give people the chance to interact face-to-face. You can also include remote workers in different activities through virtual chat rooms, online forums, and lunch-and-learns.
Build a Collaborative Culture
To establish a collaborative culture that stifles the development of organizational silos, employees need to develop the mindset and understand the behaviors that support cooperation and unity. Here are some examples of how to build a culture of collaboration:
- Train employees on skills such as teamwork, process improvement, and communication so they are all aware of what’s expected.
- Share stories on the company intranet or internal social networks, so that employees can see real examples of collaboration at work and celebrate successes.
- Use digital collaboration tools like Slack, Confluence, or Microsoft Teams, and make them accessible to all employees. They can be particularly useful for teams that are matrixed or have employees in multiple locations.
- Hold employees and leaders accountable for breaking down silos by rewarding collaborative behavior and assigning joint incentives for multiple teams working together on one project.
Make Collaboration Happen
How do you break down organizational silos and make collaboration happen? If you have asked this question, our hope is that you now have some practical steps to help you move forward.
Also, keep in mind that there is a reason why teamwork and collaboration are often referred to as one thing. It’s because in order for your teams to be high-performing, they need to be collaborating effectively to achieve their goals. However, sometimes company structures or cultures lead to unintended organizational silos. Thankfully, there are training solutions and activities you can implement to break down silos. Once you’ve established a culture of collaboration, teams will more effectively direct their efforts toward a common goal and naturally prevent organizational silos from forming altogether.
