Bridges and adhesives — focusing on the people who cross between silos
Thanks to Robert J Weisberg’s tweet just now, a quick post.
I’ve never felt so seen at reading this; the concept of facilitating across silos is something I value, and have had some success at doing and enabling in others. Silos are inevitable in any GLAM organisation. Scale, complexity and history make this unavoidable, and while many have tried to break them down, it just involves shuffling the pack. Move Design from Exhibitions to Marketing? Great, relations between Design and Marketing will get better. But two years later, a poor working relationship between Design and Exhibitions is the wicked problem keeping the Executive awake at night.
The article suggests accepting that and working instead on managing the interfaces between silos. Facilitate working methods, behaviours and skills that enable better cross-silo activity, and build reward systems to enable and accelerate. I’ve written lots about processes that enable this, but this article focuses purely on people and culture approaches.
Cultural brokers promote cross-boundary work in one of two ways: by acting as a bridge or as an adhesive.
If you work in a GLAM organisation, you already know these people. You’ll recognise them, and their different ways of succeeding:
A bridge is a go-between. Understanding both sides of a divide, they translate one language into another. Silos can deliver while not needing to understand each other. It’s transactional, based on the bridge having a deep understanding.
Adhesives, in contrast, “bring people together and help build mutual understanding and lasting relationships.” Their skills are softer, based on empathy and the investment of time, and result in long-term understanding across silos by building capacity in each silo to work well with the others.
The GLAM sector valorises and rewards single-silo expertise. It builds silos around specialities and promotes those who best fit within the silos. Our training in Museum Studies, our career paths, the associations and conference tracks all promote this. Registrars should talk to registrars, curators to curators. Front of House, well, they rarely get invited to talk to anyone.
The most successful people I have worked with are those showing these cultural broker skills. Levelling out authority. Asking questions. Preventing any single silo from making a decision alone. Documenting with transparency. Speaking openly about their practice.
How can we enhance these skills and behaviours in our sector? First, I think we have to stop pretending that org change, authority deployment or processes can fix the silos. It’s been years, it’s failed, it’s across all industries and all sectors. Let’s focus on reality. Second, we can all take concrete steps, and they begin, like so much, with humility.
My silo sucks. Your silo is great. My silos is great, and your silo sucks. OK, now what? No-one wins in a battle of the silos — any triumph is short-lived and usually pyrrhic. Stop using authority or rational arguments to ‘win’. Have a cup of tea. Talk. Ask questions, listen well. Loads of excellent tips in the article, go read that instead ;)
But here are some GLAM-sector specific ideas from me.
Suggestion 1, for hiring managers. Stop looking at candidates like this: ‘6 years as an assistant X, they’re ready to be an X and maybe in ten years they could be a senior X’ and start looking at them as ‘1 year as X, 2 years as Y, 3 years as Z; they are ready to direct a project bringing X, Y, Z (and A, B, C…) together.’
Suggestion 2, for candidates. stop writing your experience in X as relevant to a job in Y because of exposure or proximity. I have read many applications saying things like ‘working in conservation for 5 years brought me close to curators, so I will be a great curator.’ It would be better to focus on the analytical, intellectual, practical and management aspects of your skills in their own right.
Suggestion 3, for leaders. Actively notice and reward those who work effectively across silos. Valorise applied ignorance: the curious are the ones who bridge silos most effectively. Applaud empathy: those who can imagine walking in others’ shoes are the ones who build trust. Demand consultation across silos be demonstrated — especially departments known for challenging and opposing views. Ask: “How do Statler and Waldorf feel about that?”
Stop referring to job roles as decision nodes. Talk about groups of people instead. ‘The team should work on that together and make a recommendation’ is better than ‘That’s up to the designer.’
Finally, a plea for reflective listening directed solely at understanding how the world looks from the others’ perspective. As I wrote in bureaucratic radicals, the finance manager who won’t sign off your procurement is not intending to block you — they are managing the existential risk of the organisation ceasing to exist because of legal failure. Understanding that — feeling their caution as a gift, not a curse, will yield more productive working across the organisation than criticising their slowness.
This takes time, and is not how most museum professionals have been trained. It takes courage in the workplace to resist deploying domain or positional authority, to open oneself humbly to critique by owning ignorance, to invest time in relationships rather than building your silo in the eye-line of your boss. But it is worth it in the end, as the win is to reduce the micro-frictions and deliver on the goals our audiences want from us.
