Breaking Down Silos: How to De-Conflict and Collaborate Effectively in 5 difficult steps.

Breaking Down Silos: How to De-Conflict and Collaborate Effectively Does your organizations struggle with silos? Do they hinder productivity, innovation, and overall performance? Whilst collaboration and effective communication are key to success, it is easy to say, but harder to do!

Below is an extract from our Master Class. Contact us at www.orgtree.me or curious@orgtree.me to find out more.

Alignment isn't as easy to measure as profit, and sometimes we can't influence what we aren't measuring. We can help you measure alignment and how to guage the resulting employee experience.

Here are some insights and strategies to help you de-conflict and collaborate effectively. 1. Reveal the Hidden Roots of Your Organization's Culture

To truly address and break down silos, it is essential to understand the underlying culture of your organization. The assumptions we work with and the true values in play, not the ones on your website!

Here's a bit of our secret sauce: Ask departments to describe the behaviour of each deprtment and how they feel in single words. Not stories or paragraphs, single words.

If you get words like: helpful, selfless, trust, respectful - you don't have a silo!

If you get words like: unhelpful, selfish, distrust, disrespectful - you found a silo!

Obvioulsy people choose their own words, but you get the idea. The interesting bit is you just revealed the values in operation relative to interdepartmental interactions and in effect, the department's reputation. Did this reveal any misalgiments with your core values? 2. Operationalize Trust

Trust is the foundation of effective collaboration. But you know that, the question is how do you operationalise trust?

Put simply, look at the words from the above exercise, link them to the business practice or interaction that generates the words, and talk first about how that reflects your current reputation, and then find the words and values you'd prefer your reputation to be based on.

Not easy, but that is a start. Integrating your values with your inter-department interactions is harder.

Review your business practices and decide which control how others interact and which listen to and adapt to how others would like to work.

Safety is a great example from a very troubled profession. If you consider safety procedures, there is often more control than enable. If you systematically go through your procedures and ask "how does this help you or enable you to work" and you're willing to listen and make fair adaptions, you get closer to trust.

HR is another. Growing talent via the annual appraisal is often viewed as an "important" but not always "valuable" business practice. HR demand completion of the task, so we fill the form in and miss the intent.

We work with Safety, HR and all other departments teams to facilitate adaptations that result in value-add conversations built into everyday work. We help operationalise productive and generative conversations into normal business practices in a systematic way so that groups can talk about and solve everyday problems, get help as needed. The OrgTreeMe way of tracking data helps weekly and monthly team discussions on the challenges faced and resolved. Learning and growth that the annual HR perfromance review intends, but rarely delivers. HR help shape the practice and trusted people to get on with it, operations help by having informed discussions with HR, all benefit, talent grows.

Trust is required to let someone else redesign your business practices, give up control and be inclusive of diverse perspectives. Now you've planted some seeds, keep going! 3. Empower the Entire Organization

Trust grows from mutally beneficial realtionships, where we are willing and able to share our ongoing problems and are helped by others to find solutions. If you continually repeat the above exercises, you improve the connections between departments and push them to co-create mutual benefit around shared purpose. Trust grows from the seeds you've planted.

Growth and learning comes from everyday problem solving, so increasing trust between departments means you increase your available network of solutions. Belonging to the same team removes the social risks of being different, instead, inclusion replaces "fear of different", with "curious about the value of diverse perspectives".

We are moving from an OrgChart that shows hiererchies and silos, to the connected network that is your entire OrgTree. 4. Lead through a Mindset of Growth

The question is this: What do we need to do more of that will increase things we do want and less of the things we don't.

Trust is a social risk assessment: If I share this information will I or my group get help or harm? The basis of psychosocial risk management, and psychological safety. Don't get hung up on risk assessments and terminology - work on departmental relationships and problem solving - the rest will fall into place.

Information is the currency of good decisions, so trust multiples our ability to make better ones, distrust literally divides us and therefore our ability to make the right decisions. Bad things follow.

So trust is what you want more of, it is how to stimulate growth.

So, leaders: please ask groups that aren't talking to dig into the roots of that behaviour. Then collaborate on adaptations to the business practices that would help us get stronger.

Demand they pick their battles wisely, park politics and egos while being helpful and constructive in adapting the path to stronger relationships from helpful influences.

5. Recognise Collaboration, promote inclusion and values.

A focus on the problems we have puts attention on differences and gives a subtle nod of blame towards the perceived source. Recognising solutions to the problems and crediting the efforts of participants socially, means everyone can see the importance and value in contributions to our wider shared purpose. People are uncomfortable talking about problems. People want more value and help than problems, counter this by focusing more on celebrating solutions to problems and people will start fixing problems because you treat people as the source of solutions.

If you share individual stories and relate their contribution as a solution via your company values, principles and the teamwork that delivers shared purpose, you create a road map for others to collaborate and to be inclusive.

Story telling is one of the most effective ways to recognise, motivate change and build momentum. A business narrative strategy helps you throw an anchor into a desirable future and pull everyone up the chain. Telling stories of the departments and individuals that are collaborating hard today to help make that future happen, generates more of the behaviours that deliver that very future! At www.OrgTree.Me, we guide you through all of the above, from master classes to in company facilitation.

We co-create cultural metrics that show you how to guide good behaviours and increase the quality and value of interactions. We provide you with the skills and ability to build momentum with a narrative strategy. We provide you with the means to boost employee experience through meaning in shared purpose.

The outcome: not only how to build and grow momentum, but how to make the every day changes part of your sustainable, growing future.