Preventing Organizational Silos: Fully Integrating Security Programs into Broader Operations

Traditional Silos

A silo, in its most traditional form, is a large structure, most often seen in agriculture, used to separate different types of bulk materials, such as grain. Silos are great at keeping the corn completely separated from the soybeans.

Organizational Silos

The concept of silos has been adopted in business operations to refer to the separation of a different kind of asset vital to an organization: people. Organizational silos separate different types of employees, often defined by the department in which they work. Organization silos can be just as effective as physical/agricultural silos in isolating assets (people) – which is great if the people across your departments need to be completely segregated and operate on their own islands. Unfortunately, this is rarely a model that works in operating a successful business. In other words, while traditional silos work great for managing agriculture’s grain assets, they are very bad for managing an organization’s human assets. Security operations must function in full cooperation with and alignment to management, legal, housekeeping, facilities, risk, accounting, and marketing at a minimum. No-one should be providing their services in a vacuum.

Why do organizational silos exist?

It is ultimately a failure of leadership that allows organizational silos to form and exist. Operational effectiveness starts, and ends, at the top. Watching the interactions between the members of the leadership team will usually reveal behaviors that create and reinforce silos. Organizational silos form when leaders and employees are allowed to develop more loyalty to a specific group or team than to the employer or company. When silos exist, employees become more insular and distrustful of other departments, making it increasingly difficult for groups to work together. information sharing grinds to a halt, synergistic opportunities are lost, brands can be damaged, and organizational performance outcomes suffer.

6 Common causes of organizational silos

1.     Lack of team mentality.

Teamwork requires commitment and leaders who understand how to build and manage high performing teams, and continuously navigate those teams through the forming, norming, and storming stages of team-building to reach a point of consistently performing. How do you know if your company culture encourages teamwork? Team players tend to follow a shared set of ground rules, are held accountable for team-centric metrics, and avoid us versus them language when speaking.

2.     Loss of focus on company mission and vision.

Employees, regardless of their department, should all be on the same page regarding broader company objectives. Every company has a mission and a vision, and employees from all departments need to be performing their jobs with these in mind – bringing a certain level of cohesion and consistency to the workforce experience. Having a shared vision and mission works to reduce organizational silos.

3.     Unhealthy competition.

Competition within a company related to company resources (people, positions, budgets, bonus dollars, schedules, etc.) can lead to power struggles and pit leaders and managers against one other. When a departmental leader starts coveting resources and building their own empire without regard for the impacts to the broader company empire, silos inevitably form.

4.     Bad relationships.

Leadership is all about the people and relationships. Processes and technologies are important, but it is the human beings and their relationships with one another that determine the effectiveness of any organization. Allowing a difficult or toxic manager to operate in your organization, unchecked, will have serious implications for your broader organization’s operations – and naturally result in separations and silos among teams that should be working together. Where there are bad relationships, every small issue becomes a huge problem. Where there are good relationships, even large problems can be cooperatively overcome.

5.     Lack of communication.

Failed or inadequate communication across teams can’t help but result in organizational silos. Departmental leaders cannot meaningfully contribute when they aren’t made aware of problems or pressing needs in other areas of an organization. Hire the right people, trust them to do what they were hired to do, and equip them with an environment that is rich in information sharing, collaborative problem solving, and company-wide lessons-learned efforts.

6.     Poorly aligned performance expectations.

Finally, silos can occur when leaders are given performance expectations, reinforced by variable compensation plans, that fail to encourage broad company success and instead, focus only on narrow, departmental goals. While all employees are hired to do specific jobs that fall within specific departments, and department-specific goals and rewards are important, everyone should also have a vested interest in the success of the broader company. That which is rewarded is likely to be repeated, so make sure you are rewarding behaviors that require cross-departmental collaboration and cooperation.

Example Problem of Silos: Cross Selling Security Services and Offerings

When a company has their security operations, services, and offerings spread across different silos, there can be critical breakdowns across the business development programs. To sell security services and offerings, the business personnel need to understand each of the security services/offerings, how those offerings apply to each client, the benefits of each of the offerings, and the return on investment (ROI). Clients get frustrated when different business development people from the same company (but different divisions) are selling different services/offerings. When a company’s services and offerings are spread across silos, you run the very real risk of customers being presented with different “offerings” from the same company. This prevents a cohesive, combined, “best offer” type of negotiation, and damages your reputation with customers. 

Breaking Down Silos: Integrated Team Dynamics

Harvard research shows that employees who operate outside their silos learn more, sell more and gain skills faster, while the company achieves higher margins and greater customer loyalty.

To ensure a cohesive security program offering and drive a unified vision from the top - leadership needs to make a concerted effort to eliminate silos. This begins by establishing a common purpose and setting goals that go beyond divisional priorities, then reinforcing them constantly. Removing silos is an important step toward creating an organization that operates at its max potential.

6 Ways to Break Down Silos

1.     Incentivize collaboration.

Set performance targets that can only be achieved by cross-functional teams and reward collaboration through compensation or recognition programs.

2.     Get acquainted.

Help employees learn about the functions of different departments and understand individual roles within those departments.

3.     Build trust and relationships.

First, address any existing conflicts fueling a silo mentality, and be prepared to identify and nip any future hostilities in the bud. Finally, entice people to interact outside of their silos with fun, social activities that cultivate camaraderie and a collaborative culture.

4.     Create cross-functional teams.

Both temporary and permanent cross-functional teams can break down silos and have multiple benefits for the whole company, from improved productivity to better alignment. Cross-functional training also helps tear down the walls.

5.     Provide the right collaboration tools.

When different departments are using different tools, or the tools everyone is using are inadequate, collaboration suffers. Make the investment to get all employees using the same tools. This will have an added benefit of reducing the burden on your IT and desktop support team.

 6.     Address Leadership.

Make sure that your leaders are aligned in the right positions. Having the right people in the right seats will benefit your organization and help align your team to the same shared values. The wrong leaders can silo your organizations, damage your culture, undermine your values, and ultimately hurt your brand.

Operating without Silos

Take a minute to assess your current operations, because silos can very naturally happen in any organization. The good news is that moving toward a less siloed operation only requires taking the intentional steps to better integrate operations. By paying close attention to the reasons silos happen and taking steps to prevent them, as well as making the appropriate management and leadership adjustments, a robust integrated operation is within reach.