Breaking down organisational silos to benefit project outcomes by Genevieve De Michele

Abstract

Successfully breaking through and encouraging cross-collaboration between organisational teams is the key to project success. This is best achieved through the early creation of targeted, proactive and committed project working groups. This paper explores why organisational silos form and how they can hinder project success, how to disrupt a silo for best-for-project outcomes, and how to encourage information sharing amongst teams and progress towards the initiation of permanent communication channels between organisational teams. An organisational “silo” is a term used when an organisation appears to have teams working in parallel hierarchical structures but where information is not shared across these teams – in essence these teams work in isolation to reach their individual goals. The result of this separation can lead to organisational silos; developing their own culture, governance and processes which further segregates teams from one-another within an organisation. Communication across all relevant stakeholder groups for a project is the key to project success. This ensures that stakeholder inputs can be considered at an early stage in the process, risk can be allocated to the most appropriately placed teams to manage these, and project objectives can be agreed collaboratively, which are often favourable for multiple stakeholders, departments and teams. Organisational silos can inhibit this process as they encourage teams to work independently without collaboration. This is perpetuated by the unique culture and processes that each silo develops, making the process of sharing information and collaboration inherently difficult. The development and implementation of formal project working groups is a structured way to encourage the disruption of organisational silos. These groups offer each relevant stakeholder and/or team a formal role in project decision making and within the governance process, ensuring that a dedicated forum is created at which the sharing of information is encouraged. Established project templates, communication methods and agreed processes/systems enable the various teams to openly share information, further developing trust and transparency. Forming project working groups that are empowered to own and deliver 'best for project’ outcomes, the organisational silos are broken down and focus is brought back to the overall project purpose rather than independent team drivers.