Silos within organizations are not a new phenomenon. They have been and continue to be one of the most stubborn barriers to collaboration, innovation, and performance. Silos happen when departments or teams operate in isolation — focusing on their own goals, using their own language, and often neglecting the larger picture of organizational success.
In this blog post, we explore how these silos form, why they can be detrimental to organizational growth, and more importantly, how to break them effectively using leadership, communication, and intentional team collaboration strategies.
But first, let’s understand: What are silos?
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Originally tall vertical structures used to store large quantities of grain and later gaining worldwide notoriety for housing missiles capable of nuclear destruction, silos have continued in our midst for quite some time. In recent times, they stand tall within organizations, virtually even taller than the missile variety, posing as much danger to the organization’s functioning as any weapon of destruction. Though mostly virtual, and sometimes even imagined, organizations and specifically teams continue to struggle with them without success. Silo mentality, as it is more often called nowadays, refers to the phenomenon in which different teams work as if they are prisoners within one of those giant silos, not able to communicate effectively with each other.
Anyone who has worked in a corporate team would have experienced this at some point of time of the other. If it does not strike any chords, the scenario below might refresh some memories.
Source: LinkedIn
The Tower of Babel: A Metaphor for Silos
There’s a story from the Bible that has always stayed with us — the story of the Tower of Babel.
According to the tale, humanity once spoke a single language. United in purpose and communication, they set out to build a tower that would reach the heavens. But their ambitions came to a halt when their language was suddenly confused. Unable to understand each other, the project collapsed.
We’ve often seen something similar play out in corporate settings.
In one organization we worked with, marketing would launch campaigns without informing sales, who then had to scramble to keep up with customer expectations. Operations would prioritize process efficiency, while customer service would struggle to manage client dissatisfaction. Each department, though talented and committed, operated in isolation—with their own goals, their own systems, their own languages.
Sound familiar?
What Causes Silos in Organizations?
Before we talk about breaking silos, it’s important to understand how they’re formed. Here are some of the most common causes:
1. Departmental KPIs
When each team is only measured against its own goals, it naturally focuses inward. Sales chases numbers. Marketing chases leads. HR focuses on compliance. This leads to optimization at the micro level and disconnection at the macro level.
2. Lack of Cross-Functional Leadership
Leaders who manage their own teams effectively may not always prioritize collaboration with other departments. In our work with first-time and seasoned managers alike, we’ve seen that leadership in cross-functional teams requires a completely different skill set — empathy, systems thinking, and influence without authority.
Related Reading: Why Cross-Functional Collaboration Is Essential for Your Company
3. Inefficient Communication
Information hoarding — whether intentional or not — is a frequent barrier to collaboration. Without open channels for updates and feedback, mistrust can build and teams retreat further into their silos.
4. No Shared Vision
Organizations often forget to reiterate the bigger picture. When team members don’t understand how their work contributes to larger business outcomes, they stay narrowly focused on immediate tasks.
Related Reading: Creating a Shared Vision
Silos can sometimes be helpful
Silos have had their fair share of detractors in recent times, but let us also try to look at scenarios where they might actually be of use. Like in the original grain versions used for storage, silos of knowledge might exist, which serve the purpose of indexing huge amounts of information, without which there might be an information overload across different functions. This might be true, especially in areas, which have functional teams working on highly specialized areas requiring limited overlap. The amount of expertise needed in a subject area, might necessitate the creation of a knowledge silo, which might in fact help the overall goals of the team/organization. Or they might be useful in areas where information sensitivity is too critical to be ignored, for eg:- teams working in sensitive defense projects, intelligence agencies etc, where the age old saying” Right Hand should not know what the left is doing” still has its place.
The Cost of Working in Silos
The cost of siloed working is enormous — and we’re not just talking about missed emails or duplicated tasks. In our experience, siloed work culture often leads to:
- Poor communication and teamwork between departments
- Reduced innovation, as ideas don’t flow freely across functions
- Inefficient meetings and decision-making
- Low employee engagement and morale
- Failure to align on strategic goals
These challenges are not always visible at first glance. But over time, they erode organizational alignment and reduce overall productivity.
However, in more generic situations, seen in most organizations, silos definitely exist and do more harm than good towards the overall purposes of the organization. Especially damaging are the perennial tensions and undercurrents, surprisingly common across industries, that manifest as sales vs finance teams, production vs quality, product vs sales. They key word in in all those raging cross functional debates is vs (versus). Since the vs is always taken as given, it quickly translates into a “It is either them or us” attitude, which soon takes on gigantic proportions, capable of affecting organization bottom line and employee morale. Matrix organizational structures designed to nullify the silo effect have often added to confusion regarding roles and team memberships so much so that it resembles the convoluted mazes represented in “The Matrix” movie!
Source: Flickr
If silo mentality is so damaging, what are some of the simple things that teams can do to work effectively in their presence?
How Do You Break Silos?
The short answer? You design for collaboration. The long answer? Here’s how we’ve seen it done effectively:
1. Acknowledge their presence:
This seemingly innocuous first step is easier said than done. In groups that I have worked with, experiential activities have been very effective in bring about this realization within the team. Any task which involves multiple teams to take up different projects, and ultimately coming together for the common objective of the team is usually useful in this regard. Construction-ism exercises, which involve teams working together to build something can be used for a simple illustration. After dividing teams into groups, a task is assigned to the teams to construct a structure (could be a tower using day-to-day materials, Lego etc). Half way through the exercise, make the teams stop their work, and move on to the next group and complete their work! Even when groups move to clearly superior structures created by other groups, there is still a discernible sense of sadness and murmuring about their previous structures being better and more importantly, teams attach a sense of ownership to the structures they had started work on. If this is the case in a 45 minutes exercise, imagine how difficult it would be to move out of silos in an organizational setting, where people have made domains their own over the course of years!
2. Seek common ground:
Clearly, the omnipresent skirmishes between different functional groups are not easy to eliminate completely, but trying to seek common ground can go a long way in at least bridging silos. While production vs quality struggles are the stuff of legend in most organizations, an open discussion between stakeholders emphasizing the ultimate objective of both the team, of “delivering maximum number of products that add value to the consumers” in this case can be a good starting point. In a team building workshop, experiential activities can again be used to highlight this point. As an illustration, consider any exercise, where the objective (though not explicitly stated) needs the teams to collaborate for success. By skillful facilitation, the teams can grasp this learning pretty quickly. Needless to say, doing the activity is but just a starting point. It needs to be translated to the work place in clear, actionable steps for the teams to work on from a long-term perspective. Clearly, there is a lesson to be learnt in terms of organizational goal setting, which can be molded to have success of teams interdependent on others, and spreading awareness about it.
3. Build Shared Goals and KPIs
Having team goals instead of individual performance parameters can also go a long way in connecting silos within organization. Motivational author Daniel Pink (in his recent work, “DRIVE: What motivates us”), talks about research data in this domain, pointing that out that employees who were allowed leeway to set their own targets outperformed the top-down approach where goals were handed down, military style without discussion or debate.
In organizations where we’ve seen the most effective talent development, shared goals make all the difference. Instead of just individual or team KPIs, introduce organization-wide goals that teams must collaborate to achieve. For instance, instead of sales owning revenue targets alone, align marketing and product teams to also co-own that number.
This fosters organizational alignment and a sense of shared ownership.
Taking the argument one step further, if teams are allowed to set their own goals, the energy and passion with which they pursue the achievement of the same goals, would surpass the top down goal setting approach. So consider this scenario: what if you could give the same goals to both production and quality departments, as an example “Produce xxxx units of this product adhering to the xxx quality parameters”. Sales and marketing departments also could have goal setting, with marketing initiatives being measured on additional sales generated by a particular marketing campaign, in which clearly the focus shifts from spending budgeted marketing $ in any way fit to ” how do we optimize the marketing spend to generate additional revenue”.
4. Develop Cross-Functional Collaboration Skills
Breaking silos requires more than just process change — it calls for a mindset shift.
In our leadership training workshops, we emphasize how crucial it is for managers to see themselves as bridge-builders. Especially in cross-functional teams, managers need to develop active listening, negotiation, and influence skills to work effectively without formal authority.
Some tools that support this include:
- Role-based simulations that encourage teams to solve problems across functions
- Emergenetics profiles, which help teams appreciate thinking and behavioral diversity
- Strategic business games that demonstrate the importance of collaboration for success
5. Bridging Silos:
This stream of thought is steadily gaining ground amongst HR practitioners and academia alike, the basic concept being to connect organizational silos instead of attempting to break their rigid structures. Ranjay Gulati, of Harvard Business School, talks about a 3-pronged approach for connecting silos in his recent publication, “Reorganize for resilience”. The author suggests 3 areas of action, empowering (sharing of information amongst departments to avoid locking up of information); Hire (hiring people with a collaborative mindset instead of solo sharpshooters) and Reward (specifically rewarding collaborative behaviors). Clearly, the theory holds merit, but like any other, needs the blessings of top management, and a crystal clear focus on execution. In the author’s recent interview with Livemint, he shares his thoughts on the subject in detail: Encourage your staff to bridge silos
4. Rethink Your Meetings
Most teams underestimate the power of a well-designed meeting. We’ve found that a few tweaks can drastically improve the quality of collaboration:
- Begin with a shared purpose or goal
- Rotate meeting facilitators to ensure diverse voices
- Include time for updates from other departments
- Use interactive formats like whiteboarding or brainstorming tools
This isn’t just about conducting effective meetings at work — it’s about making meetings the hub of strategic alignment.
Related Read: 5 Tips for Facilitating Large Group Meetings
5. Create Cross-Team Initiatives
Sometimes the best way to break silos is to work on something outside your usual scope. We’ve seen great success in organizations that run:
- Innovation challenges involving employees from multiple departments
- Job shadowing programs across functions
- Buddy systems for new joiners that span departments
- These initiatives don’t just increase familiarity — they help build empathy and shared language between teams.
6. Invest in Collaborative Leadership Development
In our experience, leaders set the tone for collaboration. Yet, leadership development programs often focus on individual competencies. To break silos, we recommend focusing on:
- Collaborative leadership
- Systems thinking
- Leading through influence
- Stakeholder mapping and engagement
Organizations that prioritize these skills see stronger team collaboration, better alignment with business strategy, and improved talent retention.
7. Breaking Silos Through Culture
Silo-breaking is not a one-time initiative. It’s a cultural change. In our work with clients across industries, we’ve learned that this transformation happens when:
- Leaders consistently model cross-functional thinking
- Systems reward collaboration, not just individual performance
- Teams are trained to listen to each other — and build solutions together
- Culture eats strategy for breakfast, as the saying goes. And that’s never more true than when it comes to tearing down walls between departments.
Final Takeaways for L&D and HR Professionals
If you’re an L&D or HR professional trying to break silos in your organization, here are a few steps you can start with:
- Introduce cross-functional team simulations in your training programs
- Design learning journeys that involve peers from different departments
- Encourage leaders to share stories of collaboration in town halls or newsletters
- Make cross-functional project work a part of performance evaluations
The key takeaway? Silos don’t break themselves. They are dismantled through intentional design, strategic leadership, and consistent reinforcement.
Clearly, addressing the silo effect is not easy in an organizational setting, but the perils of ignoring it far outweigh the challenges in addressing them. The road ahead is fraught with pitfalls, but faster the teams become aware about the presence of silos, and work in a concerted manner to connect them, the better they would be able to work effectively together in pursuit of organizational goals.
Do share your thoughts/experiences on the subject as well.