The Tower or Babel

I invested my holidays to go back home and spend some time with my family. I think one of the most valuable things of coming back to my origins is to help me bring perspective to my day to day job. As the saying goes: you don’t really understand what you are doing till you are able to explain it to your grandma.?

On that note, I was having a very interesting conversation with my aunt over dinner. Her company is going through a very hostile merging process and she was relating to me all the conflicts, political movements and disagreements that were going on as result of it. She was emphasizing the cultural differences among organizations and the challenges she was facing,? particularly as people manager. How could she translate the new direction and strategy to her team when she was not in agreement with it or even fully understanding the new vision??

We were also discussing the communication barriers between departments that were not helping that case. The focus of the sales department was quite different from the metrics and indicators of the product development team that differed from the manufacturing crowd on the shop floor and so on.

We were very immersed in the conversation, a couple of glasses of wine in, totally oblivious to our surroundings and suddenly…from the quiet corner of the living room…we heard the voice of my grandfather…in a deep tone…saying…the Tower of Babel.

This struck home. My aunt and I remained in silence for a second. Grasping the implications of what my grandfather was saying. I cannot think of a better metaphor for an integration management effort, or to describe organizational dynamics, than the fact that people are trying to achieve the same objective, while speaking different languages.?

Applying that metaphor to an integration process, or to any other type of change for that manner, success will happen by making sure that you have effective translators in place and that the intended vision is clear to anybody, independently of the “language” that they are speaking.

Applying the same metaphor to organizational dynamics, the best way to break down the silos is to do the same: clarify the vision, acknowledge the differences and make sure that language is translated across the board.?

By the end of the bottle, and using this metaphor, my aunt had an action plan on how to start to bring some structure to her particular Tower.

By the last drop, I got this story and a great lesson from my grandpa.?

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of current or previous employers. Any content provided by the author is her opinion and is not intended to malign any religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, individual or anyone or anything.