Here’s why silos really exist, and what to do about them

There’s a reason the blue whale is the largest living thing on the planet and the amoeba isn’t.

Without structure, nothing can grow. But in organisations, with structure comes the risk that boundaries between teams become walls, and walls create silos. I know this all too well because whale-size companies were my natural habitat throughout the formative part of my career. Which means I’ve spent a lot of time trying to break down silos. I’ve seen their ability to facilitate resistance, foster distrust, and fabricate gossip and rumour.

So I would often wonder what it would be like to work in a small company. What would full collaboration feel like? What stars would we aim for, knowing that everyone had our backs if we only hit the moon? And how much faster could we bend and flex to opportunities and threats as we moved in unison like starlings at dusk?

And then one day, I was asked to run a small company – of less than 100 people. Turned out it had more silos than a grain store. Now, I have been more disappointed in my life, but probably not since I found out that the Tooth Fairy wasn’t real, with all the subsequent confusion of realising my parents were both generous and liars.

Teams of just a few people – sitting within sight of each other in an open plan office(!) – seemed to have learned all the tricks of big company siloists, and then some. And then I realised that size doesn’t matter. Silos are created in the mind, which means the only ingredients you need for a silo to exist are two people.

But hang on a minute. Most people are sociable. For proof, rather than looking between silos, look inside them. Comms within the silo: tick. Support for each other within the silo: tick. Working diligently towards the silo’s own goals: tick.

So why then do we erect these barriers between us when we’re actually all on the same team? Well the answer might surprise you. It all becomes clear when we consider that:

a) ‘my team’ represents the status quo. How the team works is understood, everyone knows what they do and where they fit in.
b) ‘every other team’ represents the threat of change. ‘Those bandits next door have different views from us, different ways of working, and different objectives’. I’ve heard this sentiment a thousand times.

Silos exist because people would rather barricade themselves inside their safe house than open themselves up to others’ ideas. And the more diverse the pool of thought, the more radical the change that may result. And most people resist most change most of the time.

The key to breaking down silos is developing people’s adaptability. And here’s what I did to make that happen: I created a Dragon’s Den style challenge, and created teams of people who didn’t work together, from different functions. They had several weeks to formulate an idea and present it. Now, more than one of those ideas was actually funded and implemented into the business, but that’s not the point. The point is that people took the opportunity to learn about others outside their silo, they were able to unite with relative strangers around a proposal for change, and they worked just as quickly as they did with those in their own silo. In short, they surprised themselves.

Adaptability is about having the curiosity to see the need or opportunity for change, the courage to embrace it, and the speed to pivot quickly. And those three skills will break down silos better than a raging bull, or whale.

Rich Alderton from High Performance Change is an Adaptability Intelligence specialist, so why not contact Rich for an initial discussion?