The siloed workplace, in which business units function independently of other business units in their department, appears to have fallen out of favor.
In the publishing industry, the old setup of multiple senior-level people in one department, each operating their own publication, is being phased out in favor of just one senior employee who manages a sea of junior employees.
The junior employees are tasked with working collaboratively on all publications in the department, rather than just one.
At one past company, I witnessed the transformation into this system and quickly noted its great weaknesses.
Lack of Ownership
When you lead one business unit, or work within one business unit, you take ownership of it. It’s your whole work world and your whole responsibility. Much of what happens to that business unit is tied directly to your decision-making and work.
The leader and the employees of that business unit, in other words, take ownership of it. When no one is assigned exclusively to one property, a pass-the-buck mentality can set in whereby no one claims ultimate responsibility for what happens to it. It doesn’t belong to anyone in particular but rather to the whole department. So responsibility doesn’t belong to anyone in particular either.
Leaders and those working under them also don’t get attached to their work. When you work on just one business unit, you start over time to develop attachment to the focus of that work. It becomes what you might call a “work baby.” It’s yours and starts to show your imprint. When it does well, you take pride in it, and when it does poorly you fret and feel disappointed.
When you work a little on this and a little on that, those attachments don’t form. Without those attachments, employees may not have the kind of passion that drives innovative thinking and new ideas. It isn’t yours, so who cares if it does well?
Jack of All Trades, Master of None
The department that’s a jumbled soup of collaboration, with everyone working a little here and a little there and everything “belonging” to everyone, leaves no one a master of anything. In a department with multiple publications, for instance, you never achieve mastery of any one industry because you’re always shifting focus. It’s a chaotic way to work that doesn’t allow employees to concentrate on one subject area, or “silo.”
There’s something to be said for a person who spends five years or even a whole career working in one business unit, getting to know that business unit’s precise spot in the industry inside out, including the contacts in the industry who are devoted especially to just what that property does.
When you must get to know all the business units in a department, that kind of mastery and deep knowledge becomes much less likely, or even impossible.
Beware of Knocked-Down Silos with Just One Boss
I witnessed a huge management misstep when a senior-level person got promoted and then removed all other senior positions in the department. That left just the one senior employee with junior and mid-level employees under them.
In that situation, the collaborative team, with their silo leaders taken away, now relies entirely on one person for direction. What happens if that one person is incapacitated? What happens is that all business units that had their silo leaders taken away start to fall apart.
If you do decide to eliminate silos and make departments unified teams, be sure to leave at least one other senior-level person in the group who can serve as a second in command, ready to step in and keep the ship afloat if the captain is laid up or otherwise indisposed.
The Peace of the Silo
Working constantly within a large group, worrying about sharing documents and plans with many people, is much more tiring than working with just one or two other people on one business unit. Being able to focus on one property, along with one or two other people who are also solely focused on that one property, is relatively peaceful.
The much-maligned silo reminds me of the peace of being home alone working on an assignment. The unified, collaborative department reminds me of being in a small room crowded with people constantly asking you questions and standing by for handoffs. It can be chaotic and exhausting. No one’s work is ever done because all the work is everyone’s work. For some of us that’s a recipe for anxiety.
How does your organization feel about workplace silos? Are they as terrible as some people believe?