This Never Used to Happen: Breaking Down Silos as You Grow
Picture this. Your company has grown from 15 people to just over 50. It's been a fantastic year.
Sales closes a big deal. The client is thrilled, and so is the sales team. The contract includes a delivery date that somehow isn’t shared with operations.
Operations finds out three weeks later, when the client calls asking for an update.
By the next leadership meeting, everyone has their backs up and is screaming about the other department. Sales says operations is slow and inflexible. Operations says sales will promise anything to close a deal. Both sides dig up examples to prove they are right.
You're leading the meeting, your heart sinking and thinking: this never used to happen.
And you’re right: it didn't. You were smaller and everyone knew everything that happened, so it couldn't happen.
When You Were Small, Connection Was Automatic
Reflect back to the beginning of the year when you had 15 people.
You knew everything that was happening because you were in the middle of all of it. You overheard the phone call with the unhappy client. You knew sales was close to landing a big account because they talked about it at lunch. If someone in operations had a question for sales, they turned their chair around and asked.
There weren't really department meetings. There were team meetings (that included almost everyone). People often worked across departments.
Nobody had to work at staying connected. The size of the company took care of it.
What Changes as You Grow
Growth changes all of that (often without recognition of what is changing).
The all-team meeting gets too big, so departments start meeting on their own. People who used to wear four hats now have one clearly defined role. Sales moves to the other side of the office, or another floor, or works mostly remotely. New people join who never knew the business when everyone sat together. They have no idea Sarah in operations and Mike in sales used to sort these things out over coffee (or across the office).
It’s small things changing constantly and it’s often why nobody notices connection slipping away until something breaks, like a delivery date nobody in operations knew existed.
Culture often shifts when the founder can no longer hire every new employee (SEE THIS POST). Silos are another version of that drift. As the business grows, teams can lose touch with where the culture started, and with each other. What was natural at 15 employees is complicated at 50.
Company Over Team, Team Over Self
As the business grows, silos naturally form as you hire or promote managers to lead each area. They're measured on their department's results, so that's what they focus on. Sales leaders push for revenue. Operations leaders protect capacity and quality. Finance watches costs. Everyone is doing their job.
Protecting and focusing on their department is natural, but also detrimental if there is no connection to the company as a whole.
Patrick Lencioni, author of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, talks about this as your "first team." For a leader, the first team is the leadership team they sit on. The department they run comes second. It’s natural to care about the people who report directly to you, but managers need to be loyal first to the larger mission.
In the Five Behaviours model, results sit at the top of the pyramid, and they're collective results. Lencioni writes that it’s company over team and team over self.
When leaders put their department's scorecard first, silos harden at the top and flow down. Teams pick up on it quickly. If my manager sees operations as the problem, I will too.
When Every Department Hires Its Own Way
Silos also show up in hiring.
If your core values aren't clearly defined, each manager hires based on their own sense of a good fit. Usually, that means people who think and work the way they do. Over time, each department develops its own mini-culture, with its own unwritten rules about what is important.
When sales and operations clash, it can look like a personality conflict. Often, it's a culture conflict. Each team is working from its own set of priorities and standards. Unfortunately, they're inconsistent because the company never defined its culture. When a company identifies and defines their core values, and then further hires to these standards, you can reduce those silos.
Building Connection on Purpose
Connection felt easy when you were 15 employees. Everyone was just there together. They were working collaboratively (generally in the same space). The connection was automatic, rather than intentional. As you grow, you need to shift to cultivating connection purposely.
Treat your leadership team as a team.
Set at least some goals that cross departments, so leaders win or lose together. A shared target for client retention, for example, gives sales and operations both a stake in how a deal goes after it closes.
Keep an all-company rhythm.
Department meetings are necessary, but don't let them fully replace the times everyone is together. A monthly all-staff meeting or quarterly update keeps people connected to the bigger picture and to each other.
Make handoffs clear.
Most silo problems show up where work moves from one team to another. Map out the key handoffs: what one team needs from the other, when, and who is responsible. In our scenario, a simple rule that operations signs off on delivery dates before a contract goes out would have prevented the whole thing.
Create reasons to work across teams.
Cross-functional projects, job shadowing, or having new hires spend a day with another department all help people see how their work affects others. It's much harder to blame "operations" when you know the people in it.
Use your values as shared language.
Defined values apply across every department. They give teams a common way to talk about what matters, whether they work in sales, operations, or finance.
Understand how different teams work.
Departments often attract different styles. A fast-moving, people-focused sales team and a careful, detail-oriented operations team will approach the same problem very differently. Tools like DISC help each side understand the other's approach, so they stop assuming the other team is purposely being difficult.
Where Do Your Silos Show Up?
Silos usually form without anyone deciding to build them. Growth quietly removes the things that used to keep everyone connected, and nobody puts anything back. As a leader, that part is up to you.
A few questions to ask yourself:
Where did your last cross-team problem first show up, and who found out last?
Does your leadership meeting work like a team, or like department heads reporting in?
If someone new in operations needed something from sales, would they know who to ask?
Breaking Down the Silos
You don't need to tackle everything at once. Pick one or two of these and start this month.
Bring the questions to your leadership team. Ask them together at your next meeting. Their answers will show you where your silos are.
Fix one handoff. Choose the handoff that causes the most frustration, and get both teams in the room to map it out: who needs what, by when, and who owns it.
Lead with the whole company. Open your next leadership meeting with one company-wide priority before anyone gives a department update.
Check your values. If departments are hiring for different things, it may be time to define (or redefine) what matters across the whole organization.
Connection used to be easy and natural. Now you need to intentionally cultivate it.
What's Next
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Need help connecting your teams as you grow? Reach out — I'd love to help.
