"Silo Thinking" - view/print this page as a .pdf (Adobe Acrobat) document.
From our years of teaching university business courses to operating-level managers, and from working with a wide variety of organizations as consultants, if there's one persistent, limiting characteristic of organizations that we hear about more than any other, it's "silo thinking."
Spend just a little time exploring the dynamics inside an organization and the complaints begin cropping up: "the operations people just don't get it," "marketing isn't helping us," "accounting just likes to create obstacles," and so on. But probe past the complaints and you begin to see the true nature of the problem: people simply don't understand the priorities and challenges of functions other than their own.
At the same time, we also hear CEOs wishing that people throughout their organizations would act and make decisions with the big-picture in mind. Instead, they see sub optimization at best, and turf battles at worst. Yet it became obvious to us that sending people to school, one at a time, wasn't having noticeable impact on organizational performance.
Our response has been the development of The Business System Lab – which we believe can be one of the most uniquely powerful learning experiences that members of your firm have ever encountered. Our confidence derives in part from frequently heard comments by participants in multiple public offerings of the Concept Workshops phase of the program in 2003 and 2004, echoing this one:
"This is exactly what I needed – it's comprehensive, yet concise, and immediately useful. I just wish others from my company could've been here to 'get it' with me, so that we could all begin applying it together on things that urgently need a collaborative effort right now." (medical products company scientist/manager)
Now, consider the expanded possibilities for your own situation:
What if you could dynamically engage a critical, promising group of people 'from the heart of your enterprise,' where they are responsible for accomplishing the daily work of the firm, in a similar pursuit – all at the same time, in their own domains?
What if they were specifically challenged to look at your business from other functional perspectives?
What if you partnered experienced outside 'scholar practitioners' with your internal functional chiefs to blend theory and best practices in meeting the actual challenges facing your organization?
Finally, what if you put these people in teams on projects of strategic value, with continuous facilitation and mentoring from the instructors who brought them the new perspectives and insights, and let them run with what they've learned?
We'd like nothing better than to consider these possibilities with you. Please call us for a good (no obligation) "business system conversation" about breaking down the silos in your company!
Bill Hannon and Tom Buchner - Creators / Developers / Instructors of The Business System Lab [sm]
Site last updated March 1, 2009