How to avoid siloed teams

With the Super Bowl and Valentines, it’s needless to say it has been a FULL ON month for teams everywhere (D2C in particular). Something that has come up a lot over the past few weeks, is how in times of chaos, silos fester.

“The word “silo” does not just refer to a physical structure or organization (such as a department). It can also be a state of mind. Silos exist in structures. But they exist in our minds and social groups too. Silos breed tribalism. But they can also go hand in hand with tunnel vision.” - Gillian Tett

Anthropological journalist, Tett, hits the nail on the head when describing the damage that siloed teams can bring. In the second edition of the Culture Compass, we will be looking at how we can avoid siloes through the lens of communication.

Here we go…

Cross-functional comms:

A big issue is quite often brand positioning isn’t clearly defined. This happens because the teams working closely with one area of the brand are not communicating well with other areas of the business. In practical terms, here’s some ideas that can help:

1. Weekly (or bi-weekly) alignment meeting

Can you get together regularly (cadence will depend largely on size of business and campaign) to share ideas, ask for input, and assign projects across the team.

A good structure looks like:

• Progress report - how are your team progressing towards a shared OKR or company goal?
• Goal orientation - have the goalposts changed or do you need to shift your goals depending on progress?
• Problem analysis - what have your team found to be the biggest blockers so far? Is it something you can solve for? (Sales teams do this really well in weekly deal reviews, can you imitate this in a relevant way for your team?)
• Task distribution - who is responsible and how can you share the load?
• Feedback - consumer insights/internal feedback/how is your project being received in general/are there any ways the team can improve the way they work together?

2. Friday wins

• When I worked at Charlie HR we found that we were lacking general context across the company of what we were working on, and the ‘small wins’ such as a bug fix or a deal closing weren't actually being celebrated. This meant the team were ending the week anti-climactically.
• Enter Friday Wins! Every Friday we would sit down as a team (either virtually or in person) and talk through what we’ve achieved each week along with some learnings. This is a fun but low touch way to involve everyone. For larger businesses this could be just for managers across specific divisions or brands to come together to highlight work done and celebrate that weeks wins and learnings.
• Remember - this is a time to build up team moral and authentically build on internal comms. Everyone needs a boost from time to time and there is no better way to do it than celebrating hard work - no matter how small the end result may seem.

3. Team Structure

• To echo again the MDS structure, divide up your working teams. Working as a sales engineer has been useful to see how this cross-team role works. For smaller companies having a flutter role that works across teams is useful (such as solutions architects for example), but for bigger companies try to ensure that you have a project or brand based structure which brings in at least 3 different groups of roles (eg. Sales, Marketing, Product).

I love this quote from 亨氏 founder, Henry Heinz, a pioneer of workplace culture himself. Beyond implementing workplace policies we know today such as ‘welfare work’, he understood how teams need to be brought together collaboratively every step of the way (from picking tomatoes to bottling) to really understand how to successfully market the business. This is what we can see in the modern day now with cross functional structures.

Introverts vs extroverts:

One of the common threads between school and adult life is that sometimes the person who shouts the loudest is the one that gets heard the most. This is a habit that we have from childhood which makes it very hard for introverts in the business world. Especially because, introverts are often the people you need to hear from the most (wild when you think over 50% of the population is introverted according to Myers-Briggs).

Leaders like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk all count themselves as introverts, and are also 3 of the most famous entrepreneurs of our age. A coincidence? I think not.

So how can we normalise introversion in the workplace?

Make a habit of inviting more introverted workers into the conversation during big team meetings.

• I always think a meeting leader or mediator is useful for guiding the meeting in general, but in particular for ensuring everyones voice is heard. If some of the team are remote and some are in office this is especially important. All meeting leaders should have it on their agenda to ensure everyone is heard in equal measure.

Regular Feedback

• Allowing individuals to offer up feedback in different mediums is a great way of gathering truthful thoughts. Some might prefer a walk around the block to air their thinking, some would like a survey to write it down, others are happy to just bring it up in real time during meetings and other people. Allow time and energy for getting feedback from everyone and invest time in getting to know what works for each individual within your team. Contractors and FTEs alike.

Send meeting plans in advance so that it allows introverts to prepare

• Most introverts prefer to read and digest the information before discussing it, so they can consider how they feel and come up with suggestions. Meeting plans are a must have across the board for this (and only set meetings when really needed - if you can do it a-sync then try to!)

A really easy way to action the above is to ensure that whoever puts a meeting in your calendar, is also the person mediating and leading that meeting. They are the person responsible for ensuring everyone is heard, inviting feedback and setting plans for the meeting in advance.

Power (soft) vs Technical (hard) skills

This is something we ALWAYS vet our specialists on and is sometimes what makes specialists so exceptional as they often have the perfect combination of both.

To avoid any confusion, here’s what I would define them as:

• Soft skills / Power skills = interpersonal skills linked to communication (eg. empathy)
• Hard skills / Technical skills = more specific technical ability that enables you to do your job (eg. art training for designers)

However either way there is a need to have both of these skills on your team. Sometimes a chatty proactive worker who doesn’t get tied up in the finer details is a vital force in driving projects forwards, but can be less good at specific expertise such as technical copy training for blog copywriting for example.

Building more of a culture around what these ‘softer’ skills might be is a great consideration to improve internal comms on a more general scale.

What we are reading:

• How introverts thrive
• Cross-functional Brand Management
• Kraft Heinz inclusive work culture

That's all for now! See you again in 2 weeks ??