The one thing leaders can do to break down team silos

Human beings gravitate towards one another. It’s somehow part of human nature and our sense of belonging. Being part of the tribe is a powerful driver. 

But, how often have we come across this in the form of silos in organisations, where discrete teams are working separately from others or reluctantly together? It’s often emphasised by defining departments based on functional skill; Sales, Marketing, Manufacturing etc. Because of these definitions, we tend to gravitate to people like us, it gives security, we get understanding and empathy and have things in common. No wonder then, different teams with different disciplines can sometimes find harmony hard to achieve.

The consequences of these negative silos however are huge; employee dissatisfaction, conflict, wastage in time, energy and money, loss of focus and market opportunities.

This is a major problem and challenge for leaders – the task of creating a truly connected value chain, working smoothly for the same goals.

But, there is something that leaders can bring into this. That is customer focus. Too often I hear businesses talk about the ‘internal customer’. But there is only one customer and that is the person that pays the bills. A business’s competitive advantage to be sustainable has to be built around customer – that marriage between what the customer truly values and what fits well with the organisation. Then of course, it’s about delivering that better than the competition.

By bringing a clearer focus around customer deeper into the business (i.e. not just the preserve of sales and marketing) several things happen; 

1.    These so called ‘silos’ move to a common purpose – to deliver a great outcome for the customer.

2.    Motivation increases as people generally strive to do the right thing in helping to solve other people’s problems. i.e. the customer’s.

3.    Greater levels of respect for each other’s expertise to deliver customer outcomes. There is no internal customer, just a clear recognition that people have expertise in key areas to deliver the end goal.

4.    The business becomes more agile in meeting customer needs and adapting to the market.

So how is this best done? Customer focus is an easy phrase to trip out, so, it pays to keep things simple. We start by recognising the obvious. Customers and employees are people.  

Leaders can engage by asking and really listening to teams (btw; listening is not waiting for your turn to speak!). By setting up a listening culture and demonstrating this important human characteristic across the organisation, leadership will find pockets of gold about how things could be done better for the customer. By sharing customer stories and insights, great conversations can be generated about how to do things better – this is especially powerful if these listening groups are cross functional – bring the silos together, build the customer profiles together. Employees don’t want to be told, they want to be asked!

Based on this repeatable asking and listening process, around who the customer is, their problems and how can we solve them, leaders gain a sense of momentum to deliver sustainable competitive advantage. This creates focus away from internal conflict and towards the customer.

So-Brand provides facilitation and coaching to business leaders who are frustrated by internal culture and slow progress, who see these as blockers for delivering competitive advantage. 

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