HOW SILOS KILL STRATEGY

Organisations may have a first rate strategy; they may even have the skills to execute and yet still fail if the strategy is torpedoed because of silos and lack of trust.

Today the costs of silos are even more costly because the world has entered a global knowledge worker economy that evolves around partnerships and relationships. This includes the ability to establish, grow, extend and repair interpersonal relationships at all levels of the organisation.

Where silos are strong I find infighting occurs to a high level and attention shifts drastically inward, away from issues such as customers and outcomes, toward battles over budgets, titles and responsibility for mistakes.

At the organisational level they separate work teams, departments and divisions. Silos make managers eager to defend their power, hoard capital and talent even when those resources could be better used elsewhere.

They cause people who are supposed to be on the same team to work against each other, paralysing performance. These factions breed office politics and infighting that cause stress and exasperation that ultimately kills productivity and pushes the best people towards the door.

Battles occur between the headquarters and the field office. And between marketing and engineering. And even within engineering, researchers and developers can be at war over who warrants more head count, budget dollars, and recognition for the success of products.

Instead of focussing on the results of the organisation, managers focus on:
1. Their own ego
2. Their status
3. Their teams
4. Their own departments.

As a result all work becomes piecemeal, diffused and unfocussed; in other words the exact opposite of "strategic".