Communication Silos Wednesday, 01 June 2016

Opinion piece written by Francis Norman AFIEAust CEngA EngExec NER, College of Leadership and Management WA

As our organisations and businesses become increasingly complex, the emergence of silos within the teams is an all too common issue. They can be easily addressed but require committed effort and can cause substantial damage if handled badly.

One of the biggest influences on a project's ability to develop and maintain an effective inter-office dialogue is the manager's ability to remove, or at least minimise the tendency for these communication silos to develop, and when they do develop, to identify them and do as much as possible to remove their influence on the project.

Causes of Communication Silos

Communication silos develop for any number of reasons, some typical reasons would be:

Parochialism, where one office becomes defensive of its position and constructs barriers to keep work for themselves;

Xenophobia, where some offices or individuals do not trust others, and try to ostracise or marginalise them;

Professional distrust, where personnel do not believe those in another location have the right skills, experience and/or motivation to do what they believe is needed for the project to be a success;

Language and culture, where personnel in one area of the project simply do not understand what the others are trying to tell them, or how they are doing their work, and are then reluctant to build the required understanding; and

Power, where some personnel want to develop or keep power for themselves, believing that "knowledge is power" keeping the key information for themselves, often to the detriment of the organisation.

Usually, when discussing communication silos, it’s the vertical silo's which come to mind, towers of isolation that keep one location separate from another. However, it is also important to recognise that horizontal silos can form. These horizontal silos occur when personnel at any level discuss things between themselves and make decisions which will impact the overall project, without considering or communicating the basis of the discussions and the decisions made to their colleagues, reports and management. Essentially the business becomes stratified, with the barriers between the horizontal layers as hard to penetrate as any vertical silo will ever be. These barriers are often less visible to personnel in each strata, as they focus on the issues at their level and assume everyone else has a full understanding of the situation.

Breaking Down Communication Silos

So, how can you keep the lines of communication open in the face of all of these barriers?

Firstly, lead by example... Whatever your role, you need to try to avoid silos developing within your area of control. If you are the manager, you will be the one your personnel will most likely emulate, if you have your own communication silos, they will feel they have tacit endorsement to follow suit and will develop their own.

Secondly, watch out for silos, if you see them, break them down.

Thirdly, reward positive behaviour. Remember, rewarding positives is much more effective than punishing bad behaviour.

However, take them down in a controlled and safe manner much like professional demolition specialists do with physical silos. Failing to take care can cause a lot of damage as egos and empires come crashing down, and if you can't remove them completely, try to make holes in them, consider the holes to be doors and windows to let in the light and allow you to talk to your neighbours...