Challenge 03: Silos are not built on purpose.

Nobody sets out to build a silo. But as organisations grow, silos develop, and the way we work can make them harder to break down.

I have never met a leader who set out to create silos in their organisation. Yet they are everywhere.

Last week, I wrote about hybrid working and what happens when we bring people together without being clear about what that time is for. One of the consequences is that people can spend years working in the same organisation without really getting to know anyone beyond their immediate team.

Over time, teams become more distant and separated, people lose sight of what is happening elsewhere, and the organisation starts to feel like a collection of individual worlds rather than one connected whole. The interesting thing is that this rarely happens because people don't want to connect. More often, the way the organisation works makes it difficult for them to do so.

Connection is about how we organise ourselves

We often talk about connection as something that happens between individuals. But connection is also shaped by the organisation itself.

Think about how teams are structured, how decisions are made and how information moves from one part of the business to another. These things influence who people work with, who they speak to and how much they understand about what is happening beyond their own team.

As organisations grow, teams naturally develop their own expertise, ways of working and identities. That is not necessarily a problem. In fact, it is often a good thing.

But the problem starts when those teams become so focused on their own priorities that they lose touch with the wider organisation.

This can be even harder to avoid in organisations that are changing quickly. Teams, responsibilities and priorities move around, but relationships take time to develop. If people are constantly adapting to the next change, there may never be enough time to build the connections that help everyone work well together.

Without deliberate effort, the gaps between teams can grow just as quickly as the organisation itself.

Geography makes it harder

One of the leaders who contributed to our research described the challenge of working across a large number of locations:

When people rarely see each other, it becomes much harder to build relationships. And when relationships are weak, it is easier for misunderstandings to develop and for teams to feel disconnected from one another.

The challenge becomes even greater for organisations operating across several countries.

One participant described how smaller groups can develop strong relationships simply because they happen to work in the same location. If three or four people from a team sit together every day, they will naturally build connections.

There is nothing wrong with that. The difficulty is that colleagues working elsewhere may not have the same opportunities. They can end up feeling on the outside, even though they are part of the same team.

This is worth thinking about when we talk about building a shared culture. Bringing people together in the same organisation does not automatically give them a shared experience of working there.

The problem might be your approval process

One finding from our research really stood out to me. Sometimes, the very processes designed to help organisations run smoothly can make collaboration more difficult.

As one participant explained:

Think about what happens when every decision has to be approved by someone further up the organisation.

Teams wait for answers instead of moving forward. They become more focused on getting their own work signed off than on finding solutions with colleagues elsewhere. Over time, this can discourage people from taking initiative or working across team boundaries.

Giving people more autonomy can help. When teams have the authority to make decisions within clear boundaries, they can move forward without constantly seeking permission.

But there is another benefit. People have more reason to speak to colleagues, share information and work together to solve problems.

So, before introducing another team-building activity or culture initiative, take a look at how decisions are made.

We cannot collaborate with people we don't understand

There is another issue that came through in our research. People often have very little understanding of what colleagues in other parts of the organisation actually do.

They may know the name of another department, or have a general idea of its responsibilities, but that is very different from understanding the pressures people face, the decisions they have to make and the challenges they deal with every day.

When that understanding is missing, it becomes much harder to appreciate why another team works the way it does.

We can become frustrated when colleagues have different priorities or cannot deliver something as quickly as we would like. But if we don't understand their circumstances, we are more likely to see their behaviour as a problem rather than ask what might be behind it.

Understanding does not mean agreeing with everything another team does. It means having enough context to work through differences and find better ways forward.

It also helps people see how their own work contributes to something bigger. When people understand what others are trying to achieve, the organisation starts to feel less like separate departments competing for attention and more like a group of people working towards a common purpose.

So, how do we start breaking down silos?

There is no single solution, and bringing everyone together for an occasional event will not fix the problem on its own. The aim is to make connection part of the way the organisation works.

The role leaders play

Silos rarely appear overnight, and they will not disappear overnight either. They develop through everyday decisions, established processes and patterns of working that can become difficult to challenge.

The good news is that these are things organisations can change.

But someone has to take responsibility for making that happen. Someone has to decide whether time together is protected, whether unnecessary barriers are removed and whether people are given opportunities to understand one another.

That brings me to the next part of our research.

We have looked at busyness, hybrid working and the structures that keep people apart. Running through all three is the question of leadership: who makes connection a priority, and who ensures it happens in practice?

In the next blog, I want to explore why leadership may be the weakest link in the chain, and what that means for organisations trying to build stronger connections at work.

The full research report, Bridging the Connection Gap, is available to download now.