Silo Mentality, How It Damages Corporate Culture And How To Fix It.
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As a team building company we constantly strive to find ways to bring people together and break down barriers. One of the most damaging challenges that companies face today is combating ‘Silo Mentality’ amongst employees and in the inherent structure of many businesses.
‘Silo Mentality’ is a reluctance to share information with employees of different divisions in the same company. This attitude is seen as reducing the organisation’s efficiency and, at worst, contributing to a damage to the corporate culture of a business.
In Layman’s terms, Silo Mentality occurs when people don’t communicate efficiently and share information with one another. There is no ‘bigger picture’ and people are encouraged to only focus on their narrowly defined jobs.
The 3 most common causes are the following:
Hoarding of Information
Hoarding of Information
This occurs when senior management and key employees perceive that it is in their interests to keep important information to themselves. Departments in the organisation compete with one another and an adversarial situation occurs.
Narrow Vision
Narrow Vision
An unclear vision or poorly defined company mission can also have this effect. When leaders in an organisation fail to develop or effectively communicate the ‘bigger picture’ which is important for any companies growth and success, staff have no singular goal to focus on or path to follow and will tend to become narrowly focussed on they particular area in the business.
Poor Systems
Poor Systems
Ineffective communication systems can be a serious inhibitor of company wide vision and effective info sharing. There are many amazing ways to share information in the modern workplace yet it is surprising how many companies don’t embrace these systems or make poor use of them.
4 great ways to address this challenge:
- The creation of a unified vision for the company and a clearly charted way forward.
- Reward Information sharing and goal competition on a company wide level.
- Hold regular fun events where employees are encouraged to complete tasks outside of their silos.
- Institute effective info sharing systems and use these platforms to track progress towards the companies goals.
better then going to work to be greeted by a group of your friends!
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