How Organizational Silos are Affecting The Connection Process

By nature, humans in organizations set a silo structure. They’ve been doing this since the beginning of time: setting up smaller groups within a larger group, in hopes that closer, more specialized management of duties will be more effective in the long run.

However, also by nature, humans forget that broader collaboration is more effective. If you look at the times in which our country was most effective, you’ll find that there was a unified, broad collaboration across the nation. Take wartime, for example. When people adapt a one-for-all and all-for-one mentality, they are focused on all achieving the same goal, and less on maintaining their tribal attitudes. Those tribes create a silo mentality.

Though history shows that times of coming together as a nation are the times that are most efficient, people often revert to tribal attitudes. Unfortunately, when times are comfortable, organizations go back to silos.

Why is this a problem?

If you look for zones within an organization, often you will find that some of the silos have no rhyme or reason for existing. They don’t add value. They aren’t creating in internal connection that impacts the internal structure in a positive way. People are “silo-ed” in diverse ways, and some of these ways are less effective than others in achieving the goals for your business.

How does this relate to the connection process?

Often, when silos exist, managers and members of these silos are not thinking about ways they can seek out and leverage solutions that provide value and impact across all of their areas.  And, for service providers who offer these solutions, they assume that one person is unlikely to know another person in the same organization, because their departments are so different.  This becomes an enemy to the connection process.

So Here’s the Bottom Line…

I am not suggesting that companies remove organizational silos. But they must be recognized both internally and externally, and evaluate how they could be influencing (and maybe hindering) the productivity of the organization.

The silo structure can be your biggest roadblock on both sides of the connection process. Look for opportunities to cross-collaborate and identify solutions that lead to a more efficient use of budget and resources across the entire organization/corporation.