Breaking down barriers

Bite sized leadership advice

As organisations scale the loose networks that enable small organisations to feel personable and nimble can no longer cope.

In his book Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari highlights that 150 is about the point where our networks fall down, social trust is reduced and we start to put processes and controls in place to manage our interactions.

As far back as 1954, by Muzafer Sherif’s observations of two groups in a study known as the ‘Robbers Cave’. showed that when groups form they create a dynamic where they only speak good of their own group and bad of others.

Lets us pause there for a moment.

1. Do you struggle with cross functional working?
2. Does it feel that other teams are putting barriers in your way and causing your team to jump through their hoops?
3. Do you find your team speaking badly of other teams?
4. Do you find that other teams do not care about the quality of what they pass between teams?

All these are symptoms of where silo have formed, along with their natural barriers.

As a leader it hurts rather than helps to have silo’s and barriers within your organisation. It blocks creativity, collaboration, trust and agility as each team protects its own turf.

It is possible to create organisations which reduce the silo behaviour. Think about Jeff Bezo’s, the founder of Amazon. Early on he implemented the Two Pizza Rule. He recognised that to enable flexible and fast communication small teams are essential, teams no bigger than can be fed by two pizza’s.

If a fundamental changes to your operating model feel like a step too far in breaking down the barriers between your silo’s, there are a few ways that you can mitigate their impact

1. Awareness. Recognise that this is natural part of organisational growth
2. Language. Change the rhetoric to break down the barriers, encourage your teams to speak well of each other
3. Be human. Create human connections. It is easy to criticise or mis-trust a faceless group, it is harder when it is a person
4. Lead by example. Create your ‘best’ buddies on your exec team as the person whose team seem to have the most conflict with yours
5. Common Goals. Find ways to have common goals that require the teams to work together for success.

Imagine. If you could wave a magic wand and build an operating model and behaviours for what you need for competitive advantage what would that look like. Blue sky thinking. Removing all your current constraints

A simple exercise, but it will inspire you to nudge your organisation in the right direction when you get the chance.

This is part of our Leadership Wizdom series, bite sized leadership advice for leaders who wish to improve their leadership, but don’t have much time. For more indepth articles check out The Change Wizard. We coach leaders and help their organisations become more adaptable at www.thechangewizard.com