Organizational Silos 101: Breaking Barriers to Performance Excellence

Editor's Note: Take a look at our featured best practice, Organization Design Toolkit (103-slide PowerPoint presentation). Recent McKinsey research surveyed a large set of global executives and suggests that many companies, these days, are in a nearly permanent state of organizational flux. A rise in efforts in Organizational Design is attributed to the accelerating pace of structural change generated by market [read more]

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Despite the emergence of new devices and software products designed to unite employees in more ways than ever before, the threat of organizational silos is still very real. While silos deter customer experiences and producing correctly functioning products – the root of the problem is that many managers fail to spot those silos as they formulate in front of their very eyes.

What are Silos? Organization silos describe the isolation that occurs when employees or entire departments within an organization do not want to or do not have adequate means to share information or knowledge with each other. Siloed teams often end up working in isolation from the rest of the company. This leads to a plethora of internal and external problems for employees, executives, partners, and customers.

In Organizational Design, it is critical to also consider the risks of unintended silos within the organization.  Having organizational silos can lead to duplicate work, inefficiency, bugs and generalized employee disenfranchisement at a granular level. Work is being done without regard to how the work impacts other departments. Departments start having tunnel vision, solely focused on their own functional area. In the end, there is a breakdown in communication and transparency leading to organizational dysfunction on multiple levels. This can greatly affect the company’s ability to deliver an excellent Customer Experience.

Breaking Down Organizational Silos: The 5 Key Symptoms

Understanding the 5 Key Symptoms of Organizational Silos will guide companies in breaking down silos and limiting their effect on performance, goals, and targets.

1. Broken Customer Experiences. This is the most obvious sign of a siloed team. Eventually, this symptom will ultimately make the company undesirable.

2. Internal Unfamiliarity. There is internal unfamiliarity when employees or colleagues are not on a first name basis. Employees are not familiar with the majority of the people outside the team and what they do.

3. The Us vs. Them Mentalities. When your department sees other departments as competitors and obstacles to success, then there exists the us vs. them mentality. In the us vs. them mentality, protectionist thinking exists. When this happens, information is not shared for fear that another team’s gain will be their loss.  This leads to the creation of cliques with its own distinct culture that is not aligned with the company’s overall mission and culture.

4. Disenfranchised Employees. Having employees who feel that they are not part of the team is a symptom of organizational silos. Disenfranchised employees are unhappy, unproductive, and pose the risk of sharing negativity with coworkers.

5. Task Duplication. Have you seen people of different teams working on similar assignments and projects? That is a symptom that there are organizational silos within your company. When there is task duplication, this can lead to inefficiencies and loss of productivity.

Companies can immediately break down barriers to communication and collaboration once the key symptoms are detected. Silos in business have two sides to the coin. The good side is variety, ownership, accountability, specialization, and efficiency. However, on the other side, the bad side means short-sightedness, inaccessibility, and inefficiency. This can harm your organization.

Organizations must be able to deal with silos inside a business. This can be done by expanding our perspectives and motivation in the work we do.

Interested in gaining more understanding of Organizational Silos, the different types, and proper ways of addressing them? You can learn more and download an editable PowerPoint of Organizational Silos here on the Flevy documents marketplace.

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Organizational Design (AKA Organizational Re-design) involves the creation of roles, processes, and structures to ensure that the organization's goals can be realized. Organizational Design span across various levels of the organization. It includes:

1. The overall organizational "architecture" (e.g. decentralized vs. centralized model).

2. The design of business areas and business units within a larger organization.

3. The design of departments and other sub-units within a business unit.

4. The design of individual roles.

In the current Digital Age, there is an accelerating pace of strategic change driven by the disruption of industries. As a result, to remain competitive, Organizational Design efforts are becoming more frequent and pervasive—with the majority of organizations having experienced redesign within the past 3 years. This has only been exacerbated by COVID-19.

Frustratingly, only less than a quarter of these Organizational Design efforts are successful. Most organizations lack the best practice know-how to guide them through these Transformations effectively.

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