Engage Your Forgotten L&D Superpower: Busting Silos

As learning and development (L&D) professionals, we pride ourselves on our ability to create engaging and impactful learning experiences. We are experts at breaking the big picture into learnable chunks and knowing how to design programs that enable learning. We can write a learning outcome with our eyes closed and we are getting better at measuring effectiveness.

One might say these are some of our profession’s superpowers.

But there is one hidden superpower that learning and development professionals have the potential to engage. It isn’t as obvious as the others, but we are uniquely positioned to use it: It’s the ability to break up internal business silos.

The walls of these business silos build slowly and unintentionally. Teams are working hard and burying themselves in their own work. With their heads down, team members begin to lose their connection to the bigger picture, including overarching organizational goals.

Silos cause misalignment, conflict, and inefficiency

The more team members focus only on their own work (genuinely thinking they are doing their best), the higher the silo walls become. These walls separate them from effective cross-functional collaboration and larger organizational goals. Team members become unable to see over the walls of their own silo. Eventually these silos cause larger issues like organizational misalignment, unproductive conflict, road bumps on the road to success, and numerous inefficiencies.

Here’s where that hidden L&D superpower has a chance to shine.

Because we sit outside the teams, we have a broader view. Like those sitting in the press box during a sporting event, we can see the gaps and missteps that those on the field miss while in the midst of the game — we can see over the silo walls.

This unobstructed view provides us with a unique and powerful potential to help our organizations with their overarching goals.

To use this ability, we need to intentionally tap into and exercise it. When we ignore it, we too can become siloed, living in our own L&D world despite the view laid out in front of us.

Embrace these five tips to engage your silo-busting superpower

Tip No. 1: Know and understand the larger organizational/business goals. Just because you work in L&D doesn’t mean you get a pass on understanding the company overall. Aim to know the larger goals inside and out. Know how your own work relates to them. You can’t help others see outside the silos of their own work without understanding what sits outside those silos yourself.

Tip No. 2: Ask stakeholders questions about how their work ties to organizational/business goals. It’s an excellent topic for any meeting with a stakeholder whether you are learning more about their work or you have specifically been asked to partner with them to create a learning solution. Keep this question in your consultative FAQ. Asking will both help you learn and remind the stakeholder about their tie to the larger organization.

Tip No. 3: Aim for a common approach to L&D across the silos. Just because siloed teams may come to you separately doesn’t mean your overall strategy should shift from team to team. For example, if your strategy includes a consultative approach/analysis to determine whether training is needed, keep that process. If your solutions include content curation, performance support, action mapping, a clustered approach, or a blend of options, stay the course with your strategy.

Tip No. 4: Reuse content from silo to silo. There is no need to create specialized content for every request. The same content can often be reused, curated, or reorganized for a different team or business unit. Be sure to let the stakeholder know that the requested item already exists and another team is using it. Encourage the stakeholder to reach out to that other team if possible. That helps to keep chipping away at those silo walls.

Tip No. 5: Tie your solutions to larger organizational goals, measure their success, and share the results. Every time you tie a learning solution to the bigger picture, measure it, and share the results, you help to tear down silo walls. These measures are a data-driven reminder that all business units or teams are working toward a common goal.

By understanding and tying learning back to the bigger picture with every team, L&D has the potential to break down silos and reinforce shared goals. It’s an impactful way to contribute to organizational success. So, tap into this hidden superpower today.

This post was originally published in the “L&D Must Change” newsletter on LinkedIn.

Jess Almlie is a learning and performance strategist with over 25 years of experience across multiple industries. In that time, she has worked in all the people development roles, from her very first job as a trainer at McDonald's to vice president of learning experience at WEX Benefits. Now, as an independent consultant, she helps L&D leaders and teams shift their approach to work more strategically, intentionally, and impactfully.