Green shoots in the wind

The curse of the modern large enterprise is that things aren't joined up. The left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. Initiatives begin with competing or duplicative objectives in different departments or with dependencies and assumptions that can't be met by other bits of the organisation. The management mantra, repeated up and down the organisation is 'we must be joined up', 'we need to break down the silos' and 'we need to work closely together' (I've never been sure what that last phrase really means).

Within a hierarchy the management time and effort devoted to joining up can be significant. As change bubbles top-down and bottom-up through the organisation the process of syncing and resyncing layers of management can become an industry in itself. Every team, function and department 'checks in' on the ideas and plans of every other team, function and department on a frequent basis. As the size and complexity of the organisation increases this communication can become all consuming. And therein lies the problem: this alignment process is a means to an end, not the end itself. There is a risk that the systems clogs up under the weight of its own chatter and individual functions fail to actually move forward at all. This risk is particularly acute for early-stage initiatives or projects.

Enter the silo. 'Not a silo' I hear you gasp - they are bad! Well in operational operational processes I'd be the first to agree. Without end-to-end coordination the value chain is broken and the benefit to the customer or the organisation is lost. Understanding upstream and downstream dependencies is vital to prevent disruption and ensure seamless delivery. Material change needs to be understood and managed and regular communication keeps everyone aligned to play their part. However, in early stage development this overhead can be crippling for a small team.

At the beginning of a product there are a million (ok I exaggerate a bit) unknowns and likely a very small team to try and get things off the ground. In the early days attacking these unknowns and reducing risk is vital. Fail fast if there isn't a market or the technology fundamentally isn't ready. This requires a ruthless focus on making rapid progress to get to the point where ideas can be tested in the real world. Syncing and resyncing with every other team isn't an early stage priority - that time will come but for now the big existential risks need to be tackled head-on.

All too often these initiatives can be criticised for operating in a silo during this start-up period. But like any fragile green shoot it needs protecting from the corporate maelstrom of information exchange so it can get things done. I have often seen new initiatives founder under the weight of their own meeting schedule - the roadshow of publicity gets disproportionate attention whilst the fundamental problems lie unresolved. Every project or product has its time before something new or better comes along or stakeholders lose interest.

So for those of us with responsibility for teams that are pioneering new initiatives we can help them by minimising their interfaces and relieving them of the burden of servicing requests for updates until they have something meaningful to say.

(Views in this article are my own)