Breaking the Silo Mentality?

Since leaving the Royal Marines, I have spent three years in industry and experienced the leadership, culture and working environment of a number of companies. One thing that has always struck me is the discussion about the ‘silo mentality’. I have heard so many people talk about it that I started to think it was inevitable in large organisations – but is it?

A silo mentality exists when people believe that it is not their responsibility to coordinate their activities with other people in the wider organization. It is a mind-set of not having to take responsibility for anything that falls outside your remit. It leads a person to become deeply frustrated as they struggle to deliver anything that requires working with other departments. It slows down and interrupts the flow of your product or service to the customer. It is often hard to measure but it always decreases efficiency, which costs the business money.

Do all organisations function like this? Is it inevitable once you reach a certain size and have to create departments with their own goals? I don’t think so – but I do believe that certain environments will create a silo mentality.

When people ask me what I miss about my service in the Royal Marines, I normally talk about the amazing people that I used to work with. That is absolutely true, I do miss that. However, from a professional and organizational point of view, I miss the efficiency. I miss the fact that other Royal Marines (and servicemen in general) worked hard to support my success. They would seek to understand why I wanted something and then deliver beyond my expectations.

I knew that within one week of joining 42 Commando as Second-in-Command of K Company, I could go anywhere in the Unit and ask for help to do something. I never found myself getting anything other than an exceptional service. It is difficult to explain to those that haven’t experienced it but it allows you to deliver enormous amounts in a very short space of time. Let me give you an example. Let’s say that I needed to get hold of a hire car to drive to a training area. I could go to the transport department and explain what it is I needed. Because the lads in there were professional and wanted to help, they’d question where I was going, what time I wanted to set off, where I wanted the car delivered. I know that this sounds simple but if I was going to Wales, getting a device that means I don’t have to claim back the bridge toll makes a difference to me. If I wanted to leave early, having the car delivered the night before allows me to do this.

This is the simplest example that I can think of but there were many others. Need some ammunition because you want to run a short-notice live firing exercise? Not a problem. Need someone to deliver a lecture on the latest threats in Afghanistan? Not a problem – that would take a couple of days.

As a leader, what this allows you to do is rely on people to ‘deliver’. Time and time again, you could say that things were going to happen because you could rely on everyone else in the Unit – and if for some extraordinary reason, they couldn’t deliver, they’d come and find you and explain why.

That was an organization without a silo mentality. Leaders were able to deliver on their promises because others were aligned to supporting their success.

At the Regimental and even Corps level, this was typical. I have spoken to numerous other servicemen who talk about similar experiences. I think that it is one of the biggest challenges that servicemen face when leaving the military. They have to understand their ability to deliver in a new organization, tempering it with the organizational culture or they will over-promise and under-deliver. This will grate against their values because it is not something that they are used to and will cause them great stress and frustration.

I think that to some extent, silo mentalities exist because humans are social animals. Our evolution has taught us that there is strength in numbers; the majority of us like to be with other people. From troops of monkeys in the jungle right through to the middle ages where people lived near castles, humans have clubbed together as a way of mitigating risks to our safety. We naturally behave like this.

In a modern business, this same behaviour can lead us to create silos. They get created because we ‘feel’ a benefit from them. We feel an alignment to our team rather than the wider organization. We become loyal to the team and its goals – over the goals of the business. This feeling of loyalty impacts our decision-making and prioritization. We focus on our internal business and what ‘we’ need to do as opposed to what benefits the company.

So how do we overcome the silo mentality? It has such a significant and detrimental impact to an organization that leaders need to create the space where silos don’t exist but yet people still feel like they belong to a team.

I believe that the way to overcome the silo mentality is by creating alignment – an alignment to the organization not just the team you work for. Alignment is created by getting the foundations of the business right.

The leadership team of any organization need to first clarify why the business exists – what was the original purpose of the organization and how does it contribute towards a better world. Profits and returning shareholder value don’t create alignment because they rarely have a direct impact on the people in the business. When people understand that they are part of a bigger picture that makes the world a better place – they will give discretionary effort. It is the difference between ‘building a wall’ because someone has been told to do it and someone being shown a cathedral and told ‘ that is what you are creating’. It is the same task but the level of discretionary effort contributed is completely different.

The second thing that the leadership team must do is clarify the mission of the business. What is it we do? How do we do it and whom are we doing it for? These questions lead to the creation of organizational values, which should be used to recruit the right people to your cause.

Lastly, the leadership team needs to clarify the vision. Paint the picture of what the company will look like and bound it by time. President Kennedy’s ‘Man on the Moon by the end of the decade’ speech is a great example of a vision bounded by time. It is a leader creating a future and saying ‘this will happen, by this point in time’ because I believe that it is the right thing to do. People will follow visions that inspire them.

If a leadership team can create the reason why, the mission, the values and the vision – they will go a long way to creating an organization that is truly ‘one team’. They need to communicate these points and keep doing it by a factor of ten so that the business knows how important it is. You cannot over communicate these messages.

In terms of managing the business, department KPIs should be created which encourage teamwork. The leadership will get the behaviour that is measured. If the CEO of a company tells his people to work like a team, then awards his leadership team bonuses based on individual performance – do you think they’ll work like a team or will they focus on their own efforts?

Silos are created by the leadership of an organisation. They are the reflection of the culture and the level to which people are aligned. But they can be broken down. Encouraging people to get to know others in different teams is helpful in building inter-departmental cooperation. Any opportunity that you can create where your people can interact outside of their usual departments is useful. If the business is paying for these interactions through informal after-work drinks or sports events, don’t view them as surplus costs to the organization which can be cut – they support inter-departmental relationships which in turn supports efficiency. Think about the long-term creation of valuable relationships rather than a one-year reduction in costs.

Leadership sets the tone. The leadership is reflected by the culture of the company. What does yours look like? If you think silos in your organization exist, do something about it. Anyone can have an impact on breaking the silo culture; they just need to take accountability for helping to fix it.  Organize a social with another team – do something, do anything to improve the situation.

If you view yourself as a leader, when you see something that is wrong you will take ownership and do something about it. Whether that involves carefully giving feedback to leaders in the company or taking action yourself, it doesn’t matter, just do something to make your environment a better place to work.

If you’re interested in developing your own leadership skills or you’re interested in developing the leadership skills of your people, please feel free to get in touch.

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