Breaking Down Silos: A Tale of Tribes and Teams

Last week, I wanted to update my facilitator profile with the new set of clients I have been working with. A tedious scroll through my Outlook calendar showed some 70+ clients that I have facilitated for in the past few years, ranging from IT and Consulting to Aviation, Pharma, Manufacturing, Automotive, and more. This means that I had to engage in conversations with these stakeholders to understand the skill gaps and business needs before the workshops. While the needs vary across industries, there is one common thread that I found across all of them. Here’s a quick thought on that.

In the heart of an organization, silos exist (and thrive). These invisible walls separate departments, deter communication, and breed tension. But let’s rewind the clock—way back to the prehistoric times when our ancestors roamed the earth in tribes.

Surprisingly, there are striking similarities I find between tribal dynamics and modern organizational silos. Here are 4 points I could think of for this argument.

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1. The Survival Instinct

Tribes:

Back in the day, survival was a collective endeavor. Tribes relied on collaboration for hunting, gathering, and safety. Each member had a role, and their survival depended on seamless collaboration.

Organizational Silos:

Fast-forward to the thick corporate rainforests. Business Units and Functions—like tribes—focus on their own survival. Marketing, finance, IT—they guard their territories fiercely. Collaboration? It’s probably an afterthought. Silos emerge when departments prioritize their own goals over the organization’s collective success. Basically putting ‘I’ before ‘We’.

Consequences:

• Inefficiency: Silos duplicate efforts. The proverbial wheel is reinvented time and again. Marketing creates content that IT already has, and HR designs onboarding programs without consulting Operations. The offshore and onsite teams don’t communicate enough. Resources are wasted.
• Missed Opportunities: Silos hinder innovation. A brilliant idea in Sales might remain hidden from R&D. At the same time Sales miss out on the communication that Marketing is working on thus creating two separate brand perceptions for the end user.

2. Communication Channels

Tribes:

Tribal communication was face-to-face. The campfire served as their Slack channel. Everyone knew everyone—the good, the bad, and the saber-toothed tiger stories. Think of a daily huddle/stand-up.

Organizational Silos:

Today, you receive your work-related updates over emails, WhatsApp, Slack, Teams and zoom meetings. Yet silos persist. Marketing rarely chats with HR, and IT/Development team speaks a different language from Sales. The corporate campfire has become a maze of digital ‘quick-connects’.

The bigger picture? Lost in translation.

Consequences:

• Poor Decision-Making: We all know silos limit information flow. Decisions lack holistic insights. Imagine a tribe where hunters don’t share mammoth sightings—the tribe starves. Or gets hunted.
• Customer Dissonance: Silos confuse customers. Sales promises features that Product hasn’t developed yet. Siloed communication erodes trust. The worst thing to hear on a client call is ‘Do you guys even talk to each other? I guess I have already detailed this during my initial conversations with your colleagues! Get your game together.’

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3. Rituals and Rivalries

Tribes:

Tribes had rituals—dances, ceremonies, storytelling, doodles on cave walls. These bound them together. But rivalries existed too—over hunting grounds, leadership, or who got the biggest hunting loot.

Organizational Silos:

Silos have their rituals too—weekly status meetings, budget reviews, PowerPoint battles with fancy dashboards, ‘fun’ Fridays. But competitiveness simmer. Marketing doesn’t trust Operations, and the delivery team rolls its eyes at Sales for over promising. Who gets the annual superstar award?

Consequences:

• Internal Conflict: Silos breed rivalries. It becomes more of a solo dance show-off rather than a well-choreographed dance routine.
• Stagnation: Rituals become comfort zones. Siloed teams resist change. Think of the time when you wanted to start a new ritual of daily huddles and people immediately resisted. Meanwhile in all of this, competitors evolve.

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4. The Chief and the business leaders

Tribes:

Tribes had chiefs—wise elders who guided decisions. Their authority was respected, but they listened to the tribe’s whispers. Kept their ears to the ground.

Organizational Silos:

Enter the BU/Function head—the modern chief. But do they hear the whispers? Siloed leaders focus on KPIs, not the tribe’s pulse. The result? Friction, missed opportunities, and a dwindling mammoth herd. Well we can always have the debate between Task focus and People focus in leadership, but in all of this it’s often the people (and future business) that takes a hit.

Consequences:

• Lack of Alignment: Siloed leaders pull in different directions. The tribe fragments. The organization loses its sense of identity. Everyone works with a different Value Proposition. ‘One team, One goal’ becomes a great catchphrase to use in internal comms.
• Employee Disengagement: When leaders don’t connect the dots, employees lose purpose. They become nomads (and drift away), not tribe members.

Conclusion: Unite or Perish?

Tribes:

Our ancestors knew it: Unity ensured survival. Tribes thrived when they shared knowledge, celebrated victories, and mourned losses together.

Organizational Silos:

The lesson echoes across time. Break down silos. Foster cross-functional bonds. Celebrate wins as a tribe. Because in the corporate jungle, collaboration isn’t a luxury—it’s survival.

So what are your tried and tested methods to breakdown Organization Silos?

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