From NO Silos to KNOW Silos - How Leaders Increase Cross-functional Collaboration.

A CEO recently showed me his new organization chart. Notice what was at the bottom:

 
No Silos

 

I asked him if his silos (meaning the various departments in his organization) were completely dependent on each other. He said of course not, each unit has its own goals and objectives. I then recommended that he re-think his “NO silos” stance to one of “KNOW when and how to open silo doors.”

As a leader, you are probably responsible for a group of individuals working in a unit, team, division, or department. You and your people are therefore accountable to produce a certain amount of work in that unit, right? Let me ask you this: How often do you and your people need to interact with others to accomplish work that is important for the entire organization?

It is my experience that the individual units in most organizations should operate independently (like silos), focusing on what they do best, most of the time. Yet, there are occasions when people in these units need to collaborate to accomplish important project and strategic goals. I’m not talking about the “I need some info to complete a report” type of collaboration. I’m talking about the “We need to work together to accomplish an important goal” collaboration. This later type of project-oriented working together requires the management of the tension between independence and interdependence. Too much independence leads to silo thinking, thereby limiting the leaders’ ability to see when it is appropriate to come together to achieve organizational imperatives. Too much interdependence leads to “over-collaboration,” creating unnecessary meetings and inefficient communications. Silos are OK, silo thinking is not. Thus, an effective leader needs a process that opens the silo doors and invites collaboration among the parts when it makes sense to do so (e.g., to achieve strategic goals).

The systems thinking action team (S.T.A.T.) is such a process. It integrates the basic tools of project management with systems thinking principles to create a systematic approach to help leaders bring the right people together at the right time to realize critical goals. Specifically, the Table below identifies the situations that call for applying a S.T.A.T.

When to Apply a Systems Thinking Action Team (S.T.A.T.)

1. Achieve fast results on strategic issues with a team

2. Improve employees’ buy-in to a key project

3. Strengthen the belief that the organization can reach an important goal

4. Keep a key initiative on track using disciplined feedback

5. Encourage an experimental, life-is-learning, mindset

6. Manage the tension between independence and interdependence

7. Develop leaders through action learning

The Table below outlines the steps of the S.T.AT. process. Don’t let the number of steps intimidate you, most of these steps can be accomplish in two meetings. In fact, I recommend that you take the first six steps in the first meeting. The next five can be taken in the second team meeting, while the final step – lessons learned – concludes your project.

How to Apply a Systems Thinking Action Team (S.T.A.T.)

1. Define a strategic issue

2. Create a cross-functional team

3. Write a SMART goal

4. Gain commitment to the goal

5. Develop team norms

6. Identify your top ten stakeholders

7. Write a brief scope S.T.A.T.ement

8. Brainstorm assumptions and risks

9. Generate tasks

10. Find leveraged action

11. Assign tasks and chart progress

12. Conduct an after action review.

Feel free to call me to discuss these steps. Which of them are you using now? How well do you KNOW silos?

Keep eXpanding,
Dave

P.S. Click on the link below (or paste it into your browser) to read about how my research on 171,000 leaders:

http://davejensenonleadership.com/XLMHoweXceptionalLeadersAchieveeXtraordinaryResults.html

Leadership, Silos and Turf Wars

"Dave, I hear you've been calling engineers in Chicago again." My boss wrinkled his brow.

"Yes Doug, they need to do something about our cardiac software. It's killing our customers." I had done clinical research in the area prior to joining the company and I had a good idea of what they needed to do.

"Dave, they know about the problem. I told you before, stop calling them. They are in engineering, you are in sales."

I didn't want to lose my job, so I stopped calling my engineering friends.

 

How often do people in your organization think in silos or battle over turf? The answer for most organizations: A LOT. Because organizations are structured into departments, divisions, and units, the business responsibilities, goals, objectives of the leaders in these units are usually set independently of each other. The leaders’ financial and emotional incentives are often dependent upon achieving specific goals for their individual units. They therefore focus only on their goals, their silos. (One of the executives I’m coaching recently corrected me, “They’re not silos, they are cylinders of excellence!”)

The segmentation of work arose from the foundations of the Industrial Revolution, where the division of labor was thought to be the best way to achieve efficient operations. However, the nature of today's work often transcends these internal borders. The rapid pace of change, global forces, and hyper-competition… demand that leaders collaborate (co-labor) with those in other units to achieve their objectives and the goal of the whole. If an enterprise is going to survive, leaders must think systemically. (1)

An organization, like the human body, is a system – “a group of interacting, interrelated, or interdependent elements forming a complex whole." System thinking is the ability to contemplate these elements, their patterns, and their interactions with each other. My manager in the opening story was doing what most leaders do -- his part. He treated his part as a separate element without much thought to the whole. He and most of the managers in the field, as well as the engineers in the home office, were blind to the needs of the system. Unfortunately, this had grave implications for our sales. When the next release of software hit the market, our customers hit the roof. The software did not meet their needs and sales plummeted. I'm convinced it was because the engineers in the home office and the sales organization were guilty of silo thinking, which lead to turf wars. They mismanaged the paradoxical tension between meeting their individual needs and the needs of the organization. They thought only about their trees, not the whole forest. How about you?

When a situation, challenge, or problem arises, how often does focusing on your part blind you to the needs of the whole? Listed below are a few of the symptoms indicating that leaders are not thinking systemically:

⊗ Lack of creativity in dealing with challenges

⊗ Previously applied fixes create negative consequences elsewhere

⊗ After a fix is applied the problem returns in time

⊗ Leaders who were partners for growth become adversaries

⊗ Leaders compete for limited resources to achieve individual goals

⊗ Conversations often contain the words I, me, my, mine...

Do any of these look familiar? How do you deal with them? What tools do you use to manage the tension between the part and the whole? Let me know…

Keep eXpanding,
Dave

http://www.DaveJensenOnLeadership.com

P.S. The web-based eXpansive Leadership Method (XLM) Assessment measures paradox in leadership using the “Agility Score.” Within minutes of completing your assessment (which takes less than 20 minutes to fill out), you can download your highly personalized Profile - a comprehensive, 21 + page report and customized action plan in PDF format. Go to: http://xlmassessment.com/ to read about the assessment.

1. Joseph McCann; Organizational Effectiveness: Changing Concepts for Changing Environments, Human Resource Planning, 3/1/2004.