Say No to Silos!
Written by Renée Safrata - renee@reneevations.com, September 15th, 2009
One of the things I’ve noticed this past year, especially given our difficult economic environment, is that individuals on teams are hungry for results. In fact, they’re so hungry for those results that they’re grasping everywhere they can –anywhere, from corners of the business — to get a result. That desperation is taking their focus off the company’s core strategic objectives and increasing their tactical behaviors.
It’s chaotic, really. And when they’re faced with chaos, many team members tend to focus more on their own individual activities – what’s happening on their own computer –instead of focusing on their teams and team objectives. And that’s increasing the “silo” effect within organizations, which hampers productivity, innovation, growth, and more.
So how can you combat this silo effect? By creating “interdependence” goals in your teams. These goals are designed to stimulate teamwork, combat silos, and increase engagement. There are many forms these goals can take; here are a few to get you started.
One-Way Learning Goal
means that the team sets a goal for all members to understand a specific concept well enough to explain it to another team. For example an engineering applications group and engineering sales team must explain their methods, goals and challenges to one another.
Product or Process Goals
encourage teams to reach consensus on product or process issues such as dealing with customer complaints or the launch of a new product.
Reward Goals
create shared rewards for team members. For example, in a training program for product knowledge or customer relations, learners receive an individual score AND a certain number of points if all group members score at or above a certain benchmark.
Resource Goals
means that individuals each possess specific resources needed for the team as a whole to succeed. This can be arranged by giving specific resources to different individuals in the team.
Role Goal
occurs when specific roles are assigned to team members (for example, recorder or time keeper). The roles can rotate weekly to give all team members the experience.
Task Interdependence Goal
occurs when one group member must first complete his/her task before the next task can be completed. For instance, collecting customer feedback might be assigned to two team members while research on customer feedback is done by two other team members.
One way to ensure that productive interdependence occurs lies with the face-to-face communication interactions between working team members. If leaders and executives create a plan to embed the different types of interdependence goals into monthly and quarterly plans, teams will show improved productivity along with team culture and professional trust.
Are you experiencing the silo effect in your organization? If so, can you think of any opportunities for including am interdependence goal into your teams within the next 30 days? Please share your thoughts in the comment area, and good luck!
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