Unlike many terms in business jargon that seem to come and go with little lasting impact, business silos are a persistent problem faced by modern businesses for decades now. Many experienced managers and management specialists believe that silos are a natural development as a business grows beyond its unified roots into a more complex departmental institution. Therefore, dealing with silos is a universal problem faced by businesses as they make the difficult transition from a small to medium or larger sized company.
Fortunately, the broad experience with silos in modern business means that they are a well-understood aspect of medium and larger sized businesses, with a well-established approach to dealing with them.
The development of business silos is ultimately a management issue, as it is the development of separate entities inside of a business with their own managers, employees, goals, and metrics that creates this sense of division within a company. While the effects of silos may manifest in the actions of a company’s employees, only the company’s management team is in the position to actively degrade the cultural effects of a growing silo mentality and promote a synergizing attitude toward company-wide teamwork. Managers must actively and explicitly set the tone for helping each other across departmental lines by leading the way and setting the example. Managers should promote positive attitudes toward other departments and simultaneously discourage negative ones.
Managers should also reward examples of positive cross-departmental efforts and initiatives with praise and promotions. Finally, the management of a company needs to constantly represent a unified front to its employees, and always promote the sense of working together toward common goals, even when the individual tasks and metrics involved will be unique to each department.
The development of business silos can be seen as the first real test of a growing company’s ability to manage the more complex institutional problems that medium and larger sized companies inevitably face. Tackling the problem of silos head-on can be an excellent way of improving your team and ensuring that you have the right people in the right management positions to face the coming challenges that your growing success will bring.
Fortunately, you do not need to face this serious challenge alone. At X5 Management, we specialize in problems like business silos and have the expertise and experience that you need to ensure that your management team can tackle silos and other similar problems with ease and confidence.
Please contact us at 587-982- 9595 or www.x5management.com to find out more about how we can help to provide all your employees with the skills they need to tackle any problems that they will face in modern business.
