Hacking Digital 4: How to work across silos 

Checklist

• Are employees collaborating across business units?
• Does the existing incentive system help or hinder collaboration?
• Do roles, processes, and organizational structures perpetuate silos and functional boundaries?
• Are employees rallying around a common goal and sharing the same vision for the organization’s future?

Four key actions

• Align everyone

Make sure your top team is aligned and fully on board with a supportive culture, and foster an ethos of information-sharing and rallying around the same goal.

• Incentivize collaboration

Incentivize collaboration and resist the urge to establish separate digital teams of experts to push the agenda forward.

• Promote a sense of shared ownership

Create a shared sense of digital vision and ownership that continuously grows throughout the organization.

• Foster unity

Create a sense of unity that makes everyone pull in the same direction.

Hacker’s insights

• Revisit departmental goals

Breaking down silos is about getting everybody pulling in the same direction. Start by revisiting the goals of different departments and sub-units, and make sure everyone is working towards a shared organizational purpose.

• Adjust incentives

Revisit the organization’s incentive system to ensure it’s not working against you. Remove incentives that prohibit collaboration or create competing goals among units or functional areas. Look at the incentive system as a whole, rather than at each unit separately.

• Establish an agile way of working

There’s no one right way to do ‘agile.’ A core element of agility is the ability to overcome silos and rivalries. Many methods and examples can inspire you, but whatever you choose needs to be adapted to your organizational context.