Back to the silos
The military organized themselves around their structure – and thus too did businesses. Note, ‘around their structure’, not ‘around who they serve’. If businesses organized around who they serve – ie their (hopefully) ‘raison d’etre’, wouldn’t life be different?
As a side note, I wonder if the military organized itself around ‘the enemy’, whether we would have has a better track record over the past 50 years of war – but that’s another article – and hopefully written by someone more qualified than me!
Enter Dynamic Silos
Imagine a real ‘people-centered’ business focused on ‘we the people’. Imagine if that company wanted to engage with those people in a meaningful way? Yes, there would still be silos (because I think it is clear – silos are the best way to organize teams of people). But, what if those silos were focused on us and because each of us is different and continually changing, those silos were also unique and of course always changing? What would a business look like then?
Scenario
Imagine if I am a customer of a bank, calling to check if a payment has been received. I don’t know, indeed don’t care of the payment route, I just need to know if the money has been received. So I do not want to work through and / or talk to the silos;
- international transfers
- the internet team
- the peer-to-peer online group
- the branch
- the head office
- the call center
I simply want an answer to my question. (I know – these days banks have added a veneer layer to their organizations for some customers called an ‘account manager’ – but this is not fixing the problem – the silos still exist, the account manager is your personal interface to the arcane structure of the bank.
How would that bank organize itself to provide that kind of service? And what would THOSE dynamic silos look like? How often would they change?[su_spacer]
Static Organizational Silos
It’s a term that came to me as I was thinking through this challenge. Over 15 years ago a group of us were working on an issue that we dubbed ‘THE Business Imperative’ and that was that businesses faced an existential threat and needed to rapidly shift their thinking, people, processes and technologies that were then satisfying ‘Producer Efficient Supply Chains’ and realign them to ‘Customer Effective Demand Networks’. If a business does that, the silo problem is fixed as part of the solution. The problem is that businesses aren’t doing it. Or at least not quickly enough.And so we have these confounded silos.
I opened up with at the beginning of the article I talked disparagingly of silos. And then I concluded that they are actually essential. The fix is not to break down the silo – but to create Dynamic Customer Silos.
Our Silo Hatred Is Misplaced
Misplaced because the ones we know are static organizational solos – we will come to love the dynamic customer silos … here is a start to how I see the differences …
Static Organizational Silos | Dynamic Customer Silos |
built around organizations | built around customers |
measured on the efficacy of the silo | measured on the value they add to the customer experience |
big | small |
inflexible | agile |
talk in tongues | talk to customers |
compete | cooperate |
“Imagine if those dynamic silos were all about the customer – delighting me at every turn, focused on me – imagine how good I would feel, imagine how loyal I would be, imagine how much I would talk to others about how great your company is. Imagine how much money your company would save with reduced advertising, less customer churn, increased customer growth, improved operations …. The only question is what are we waiting for?
Of course, part of the twist needs to be that people are creatures of habit. So as part of the change, we will need to convince all of the silos that nobody in the corporate ‘owns’ me – or my data. Why? Because I am my own System of Record.
Clay Forsberg on Silos – just this morning ….
“We live in world infected with silos. And I don’t mean silos that hold corn and wheat. The obsession with specialization and being an expert has been thrust upon us for decades now. And it shows no signs of letting up. And no where is this more epidemic than in the medical field.”
https://clayforsberg.net/2017/08/15/an-open-letter-to-healthcares-c-suite/
Another consideration here is this – at what point do we get sucked into our own bubbles or silos or spaces etc, and what practices would help us be better practiced at challenging or discussing what we need to be working on and why. See – https://medium.com/make-meaningful-work/why-4cba31945f63
me? siloed? what do you mean – that’s everyone else’s problem !!!
seriously though, is not part of the problem the lack of inquisitiveness in people, their lack of desire to explore? know more? we see it all over in society – maybe solos were our early warning system?
Yes there are lights going off all over the place to give us warning. But are we awake enough to be seeing it?
I reference Bertrand Russell : ”Most people would rather die than think; many do.”
yes indeed
There can be silos of thinking, silos in small teams, silos in larger teams and larger organisations. So perhaps the key to this is, how do we practice not breaking silos, but encouraging the bridges between them and the activities to support the meetings on those bridges.
to extend the metaphor – bridges do tend to be bottlenecks …. but a merged silo experience …? maybe we just need to have the walls of the silos be more semi-pervious ?
They can be and some reference here to who is on the bridge and how this is being guided and by who. Lends the question, what practices and capabilities are required on the bridge?
a translator. someone who knows ‘where you have been’ – ‘where you are’ (on the bridge) – and where you are going – we spend too long relearning and saying there is a better way – without properly understanding what the current way is …. an American metaphor – the pioneers left the east coast and arrive in St Louis – with a view to heading to the ‘Californias’ … do they go with a twenty something that arrived on the prior stage coach – or the 50 year old wizened cowboy that just came back from the ‘fornias …. I know what we used to do – and that is not what we do today. Ignorance is now honoured. Wisdom is eschewed.
having a translator or local to be able to guide you can make all the difference.
I feel silos are a fact of life. They will always exist when the behavior or ideology is different. All we can do is set a vision where we know that vision will align everyone across all the silos to the same end goal. And that’s easier said than done.
There are many people we work with that claim they’re experts in setting vision. If they make no mention of storytelling, engagement, and sense of urgency — they’re no expert. Setting a “successful” vision is the first step to minimize the impact of silos.
And or consider the importance of smaller teams made up of the necessary skill sets from the silos with bridges into the silos as resources are needed. There does appear to be a relationship between number of people, silos, transactional thinking, politics, group think etc Perhaps it comes down to what kind of places we want to work for and type of people we want to work with and why?
Totally awesome points. And in agreement. Anytime we complete organizational change to tear down the silos, silos would fracture and reform. We used to call it “whack a mole”.
Silos are good when you know where they are. This makes gap analysis easy because all problems, all gaps occur usually between the silos. Once we know the problems, we can easily make people accountable to address those problems.
There was one client who tore down all their silos and they reformed much lower in the organization. These silos not only impeded the delivery of projects, they created friction and bad blood between the teams. This drove over 20% of people in a department to leave.
Why did it create friction?
interesting question Chris
There were quite a few missing pieces that exaggerated the impact of the silos and created friction at the lower levels of the organization.
1. Folks at the top chose the culture change aspects of organizational change as the primary method. Very little effort was placed on the formal processes and how they were linked through the organization. Silos were not addressed from the top.
2. Silos moved down deep into the work structure. Those that worked at that level had very little to no skills in how to integrate and change processes to complement the shift in silos. Workers received very little support from their management. Anytime they requested help, the were given a “rah-rah motivational speech.” This turned silos from speed bumps into vertical cliffs.
3. Executive management completely disregarded any concerns that escalated up the chain of command regarding these silos and unaddressed parts of core processes. Concerns were written as “undercurrent” and “irrational fear”. Many workers didn’t appreciate the criticism on top of that lack of help.
thanks for coming over and the considered response Chris …. back in my citibank days we used a term – ‘the permafrost layer’ – at the top people knew the issues, recognized that they needed to move, to change and tried to make it happen. people in the lower levels of the organization … the front lines also knew things had to change and did their best but the permafrost layer embraced status quo – and essentially slowed down changes – if not stopped them altogether. my guess is that those were the people who THOUGHT they had more to lose personally, measuring their success by the size of the organizations – not by the success of their customers and overall organization they worked for.
Self protection for self and selfish gain?
EXACTLY … and so easy to spot!
Here’s one of my favorite quotes, from the movie, “Men In Black”. It talks about people. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkCwFkOZoOY
When people have fear, their IQ points drop significantly leading to some really “nut bar” decisions. The top thing I always advocate is building certainty in the masses through various “levers”. Less fear means more smart people are available. This can lead to more certainty through leadership, communications, and credibility. More certainty means less politics. Less politics means more openness to talk about the hard topics. The more discussion, the more smoothly the change progresses.
Great quote – which I have captured for future use – thankyou
… and LOVE the clip … prescient !
Thank you. So lack of support and care and compassion for the people and emotions present appears to be one of the core issues?