Silo Syndrome
Each defends its allocation. Each optimises its metrics. Each celebrates its victories. None of them share credit, resources, or even information without a formal request.
The loveless keep everything for themselves. The loving give even their bones. Valluvar contrasts hoarding with generosity. Your departments chose hoarding. The blueprint says collaboration. The budgets say walls. Your teams work in separate financial universes. Engineering has one budget. Marketing has another. Product has a third. Customer success has a fourth. Each defends its allocation. Each optimises its metrics. Each celebrates its victories. None of them share credit, resources, or even information without a formal request.
Sports Direct under Mike Ashley was hierarchy as pathology. I found the 2016 parliamentary inquiry testimony. Warehouse workers at Shirebrook were subjected to body searches at the end of every shift, unpaid. The searches took so long that effective pay dropped below minimum wage. Workers were penalized for being ill. One employee gave birth in a warehouse toilet because she feared losing her job for taking sick leave. The hierarchy wasn’t dysfunctional. It was functioning exactly as designed: total control, zero dignity, maximum extraction.
Silos store grain. They don’t mix it. In agriculture, grain silos are designed for separation: wheat in one, corn in another, barley in a third. The design prevents contamination. Each grain maintains its purity. Organizational silos work identically: each department maintains its operational purity. Finance thinks like finance. Engineering thinks like engineering. Marketing thinks like marketing. The separation prevents ‘contamination,’ the messy cross-pollination of perspectives that produces innovation. Each silo is efficient. The farm between them is empty.
Walk from one department to the next this week. Ask a simple question: ‘What do you need from us that you’re not getting?’ The answer is the wall. Every wall has a door. You just have to knock.
That sealed boundary has a name. Silo Syndrome. And once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
Untie The Knot
Uproot
Silos formed because budgets, metrics, and incentives were departmental. Each team optimised for its own success. Cross-functional collaboration had no budget line, no metric, and no reward.
Navigate
At least one KPI per team measures cross-functional outcome. Collaboration is budgeted. Credit is shared.
Tool
CORE / Legacy: the framework that measures what one team gives to another, not just what it produces for itself. Legacy makes cross-functional contribution visible.
Implement
Walk to another department and ask: what do you need from us that you’re not getting? The answer is the wall that needs a door.
Emerge
When collaboration is rewarded, silos dissolve naturally, information flows across boundaries, and the organisation starts optimizing for the customer instead of the org chart.