Avoiding the Silo Effect

As the number of people in a team increases, it becomes very easy for them to become siloed to their specific responsibilities. Developers focus on the code, marketing focuses on campaigns, sales interacts with clients, and leaders direct their teams towards business goals. Specialization is essential, but when teams stop communicating and collaborating, silo behavior can emerge.

What Is the Silo Effect?

Silo behavior happens when people or departments act separately instead of acting toward common organizational goals. All information is kept inside the team, decisions are made without involving stakeholders, and employees can lack the overall picture of what is going on.

The Cost of Working in Silos

Working in silos leads to duplicated efforts, contradictory priorities, miscommunication, and unnecessary delays. A developer may work on some function without being aware of new customer requirements. A marketer may prepare a campaign based on functionality that will not appear on time. Two teams may work for several weeks on the same problem and not even realize this fact. All result in wasted effort, potential embarrassment and a decline in reputation.

Not all meetings and involvement in decisions help avoid silos, and sometimes excessive communication creates problems too. To prevent silo behavior, you need to develop practices to get crucial information across teams.

Creating Visibility Across Teams

First of all, it’s necessary to ensure a shared vision of a process. Shared boards, roadmaps, documentation, and regular updates will allow employees to see what other teams do and how their responsibility fits in the bigger picture.

Managing Cross-Functional Dependencies

It’s  also important to document and communicate cross-functional dependencies and define their owners and expectations before they become a last minute problem. This means that if some work of one team depends on the work of another team, then this dependency should be documented and communicated.

Communication Needs Context

Creation of communication channels is a vital step too. It’s important to inform employees about places where they can ask questions, find past decisions, and learn about the project. Knowledge that lives in private discussions and individual emails easily creates silo behavior.

The last step is encouraging employees to provide context to other employees. Instead of blindly sending a task to somebody, it’s important to explain why it’s needed and how it influences other employees and the organization.

Effective teams have specialized roles, but these teams don’t act in isolation from each other. With increased visibility, documented dependencies, and consistent communication channels, organizations can have specialized teams without silo behavior.

Editor’s note:  Shelley Benhoff is a Delta Technology coach, specializing in collaboration, communication, proactivity, and teamwork. She is an expert at eliminating silo behavior in teams and organizations. Schedule some time with Delta Technology to discuss how Shelley can help your organization.