Breaking Silos within the Organization - Presentation wanted

[Ajit Basrur]

Does anyone have ideas on how break the silos within the Organization ? This is in response to an observation made by a customer that the departments do not knit well. The customer did give some valid points to stress this point.

How could I put up this case ? Any PowerPoint / Excel presentations that could drive this point ?

 

[samsung]

Re: Presentation - Break silos within the organization ?

Hope this presentation helps.

Also see 'Figure-2' of this article.

 

[Ajit Basrur]

Re: Presentation - Break silos within the organization ?

Thanks samsung.

We have many meetings in our organization starting with Strategic Management meetings, Management Reviews, Quarterly Business Review Meetings, Monthly Meetings, Weekly Improvement Plan meetings apart from the ad hoc meetings conducted.

Can anyone share ideas how I could present this in a Excel spreadsheet to track along with its respective action items ?

 

[Stijloor]

Re: Presentation - Break silos within the organization ?

Thanks samsung.

We have many meetings in our organization starting with Strategic Management meetings, Management Reviews, Quarterly Business Review Meetings, Monthly Meetings, Weekly Improvement Plan meetings apart from the ad hoc meetings conducted.

Can anyone share ideas how I could present this in a Excel spreadsheet to track along with its respective action items ?

Ajit,

In the header row, list all the types of meetings you have.
In the left column, you list all the processes and its owners.

In the cell where row and column intersect, you can list abbreviated action items and hyperlink the cells with more specific action items, responsible persons and due dates.

Just a thought.

Stijloor.

 

[harry]

Re: Presentation - Break silos within the organization ?

Does anyone have ideas on how break the silos within the Organization ? .........................................

Silos are there because the organization design it that way and if a decision is needed to break it or authority sought, it had to go back to the top.

Due to its long history or existence, people are conditioned by tradition to identify with silos. When you break them, you need to change their mind set - which brings you back to change management. And the first prerequisite is to have willingness to do so from the top. To conclude, you are dealing with change management (have you decided on a better structure after breaking the silos?).

 

[ab001]

Re: Presentation - Break silos within the organization ?

Functions versus Processes

Functional silos are created to group people with similar skills (designers vs production vs sales vs accounting vs stores vs admin) and ensure a steady stream of work. designers just do design, sales just do sales, ...

Unfortunately you don't sell these functions (I assume), you sell products. You need to show how all these functions fit into one process - the end to end process.

I did a workshop by bringing people of different functions together to describe the process. I drew a picture of our customer's factory with a smiling customer sending us an order. at the other end was our delivery truck (complete with dints). I asked the question, "How do we get from here to there?"
We described how the process works and got people to realise the importance of what other people do. And we figured out a way of solving our problem.
i think adding the joke about the smiling customer (our customers don't smile at us) and the dints in the truck were important in getting people engaged.


I've been working with Business Process Management (BPM = Quality, but on the internet) people recently. They are big on end-to-end processes (even though most don't know how to define them)

Come up with a catchy name. For instance, the US Army Logistics people call their process "From Factory to Foxhole", human resources anywhere is "Hire to Retire", "From Art to Part" in a machine shop, ...

 

[BradM]

Here are some suggestions from businessweek:

http://www.businessweek.com/managing/content/feb2010/ca2010025_358633_page_2.htm

I have always heard there are two ways to change culture: Time and upper management.

A couple of ideas:

1. Analyze the way the budgets operate. Silos exist, because they are allowed to operate independently as a business unit. If they have to share money, they will be forced to work together better.
2. If employees compensation systems evolve around how the "silo" performs, it will need to be revised to allow for a different compensation plan.
3. Reduce the number of forms (business forms; not quality forms). Form xxxx for a computer replacement signed by 1, 2, 3, 4; form yyy for software signed by 400 people; purchase orders going around the world, etc. Not only reducing them, but analyzing their purpose and who really, really needs to approve them, can make some headway.

Nothing really brilliant or revolutionary. Just some things I thought of. As you well know... they weren't built overnight; and won't come down overnight. Unless.... top management bulldozes them down.