{"id":359,"date":"2014-06-18T10:00:06","date_gmt":"2014-06-18T10:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rocksolidbizdevelopment.com\/ourblog\/?p=359"},"modified":"2025-07-01T17:20:24","modified_gmt":"2025-07-01T17:20:24","slug":"tear-down-those-information-silos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rocksolidbizdevelopment.com\/ourblog\/tear-down-those-information-silos\/","title":{"rendered":"Tear down those information silos!"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a recent Time magazine article entitled \u201cWe\u2019ve All Got GM Problems,\u201d columnist Rana Foroohar talks about General Motors\u2019 recall problems.\u00a0 She says the problems came to a head because the people and departments involved \u201cliterally weren\u2019t communicating with one another.\u201d\u00a0 She chalks up those problems to \u201ca systemic problem in most big corporations as well as governments \u2013 insular management or, in the parlance of gurus, information silos.\u201d\u00a0 As an example, she points to Sony who \u201donce had two separate divisions working on creating the same electrical plug without anyone realizing it.\u201d\u00a0 With all due respect to Ms. Foroohar, information silos are not unique to Fortune 500 companies and governments.\u00a0 Unfortunately, small and mid-size companies often have them too.\u00a0 And they can create just as much havoc in smaller institutions as they do in large organizations.\u00a0 For more on this, please read below.
\nIn business, functional<\/em><\/strong> silos are a necessity.\u00a0 That is, each division or department or team needs to know where it\u2019s functional responsibilities begin and end.\u00a0 Without such boundaries, there would be overlap, duplication of effort, and in general, chaos.\u00a0 But information<\/em><\/strong> silos are a different matter entirely.\u00a0 You want there to be as much transparency as possible between all the company\u2019s operating units.\u00a0 In the best of all worlds, everyone would know everything about what everybody else is doing, why they are doing it, how they are doing it, and when they are doing it.\u00a0 A friend of mine used to talk about operating his company according to \u201cthe Doctrine of No Surprises.\u201d<\/p>\n

So why do these information silos exist?<\/p>\n

In some cases, these exist due to the paranoia of the operating unit\u2019s manager.\u00a0 He or she may hoard information in the belief that there\u2019s job security in being the only one who really understands how the unit functions.\u00a0 But it may also simply be that the manager doesn\u2019t want to be second-guessed by anyone else on how he or she chooses to do things.\u00a0 I actually had a CEO tell me once that he encourages and perpetuates information silos because that way, he\u2019s the only guy who understands how it all fits together, thereby making his managers less likely to challenge any of his decisions.\u00a0 Really!<\/p>\n

However, in most cases, these information silos exist due to benign neglect . . . the company just hasn\u2019t established and maintained clear channels of communication up, down, and across the organization.\u00a0 You may feel you have those channels of communication well entrenched, but do you?\u00a0 Are you sure?\u00a0 If you asked a random sample of employees how often they feel blindsided by activities in another functional area that impacts their work, what do you think they would tell you?<\/p>\n

Particularly in smaller organizations, the communications issue can be handled quite simply.\u00a0 I know of one company that holds a management team meeting every Monday morning at 8:00 a.m.\u00a0 It\u2019s literally a standing meeting . . . no one sits because the meeting ends promptly at 8:15.\u00a0 The only purpose of this particular meeting is to give each manager an opportunity to inform the rest of the team what to expect from his or her area of responsibility during the coming week.\u00a0 Notes from the \u201cstanding meeting\u201d are posted in each department so everybody else knows what to expect for the week.\u00a0 Again, the Doctrine of No Surprises.\u00a0 If the Accounting Department is going to be installing an upgrade to our accounting software, tell us.\u00a0 If the Production Department is going to be working overtime to process an unusually large order, tell us.\u00a0 If the Marketing Department will be rolling out a new sales initiative, tell us.\u00a0 Even if you don\u2019t think what you\u2019re doing will impact the rest of us, tell us.\u00a0 You get the idea.<\/p>\n

Maybe the \u201cstanding meeting\u201d approach doesn\u2019t work for you and that\u2019s OK.\u00a0 There are lots of ways to skin this particular cat.\u00a0 The important thing is to find communications channels that work for you, install disciplines so those channels are kept alive and well, and make the Doctrine of No Surprises a hallmark of your culture.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a recent Time magazine article entitled \u201cWe\u2019ve All Got GM Problems,\u201d columnist Rana Foroohar talks about General Motors\u2019 recall problems.\u00a0 She says the problems came to a head because the people and departments involved \u201cliterally weren\u2019t communicating with one another.\u201d\u00a0 She chalks up those problems to \u201ca systemic problem in most big corporations as<\/p>\n

Read More\u2026<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[39,36,33],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rocksolidbizdevelopment.com\/ourblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rocksolidbizdevelopment.com\/ourblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rocksolidbizdevelopment.com\/ourblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rocksolidbizdevelopment.com\/ourblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rocksolidbizdevelopment.com\/ourblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=359"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/rocksolidbizdevelopment.com\/ourblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1192,"href":"https:\/\/rocksolidbizdevelopment.com\/ourblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359\/revisions\/1192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rocksolidbizdevelopment.com\/ourblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rocksolidbizdevelopment.com\/ourblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rocksolidbizdevelopment.com\/ourblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}