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Organizational silos start in our minds

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Silos are at the same time a problem enterprise 2.0 tries to solve and one of the reasons it's often hard to implement. Fighting agains silos is, of course, a tough and long battle but the more resistant ones seldom are where we expect them to be.

There are many ongoing discussions about what enterprise 2.0 is about, where to start, what to tackle first, what is key to success.

Is enterprise 2.0 for employees only or can it involve a larger ecosystem ? Is it about tools or about people ? Does it have to rely on business processes or is it about everything but processes ? Should it be led by IT, HR, communication ? Is it easier when it focuses on in the flow rather than above the flow activities ? The list has nearly no end

Each time we ask those questions before doing anything, each time we make the answer one of the pillar of a project, we are, in fact, building what's supposed to be a silo buster on other silos that are not in the organization but in our own minds.

We are used to thinking in terms of "or". External or internal. People or tools. Processes or not processes. Structured or unstructured. Employee driven or enterprise and business driven.... As we're segmenting our thoughts, we're segmenting our answers and, consequently, only bring partial and incomplete solutions to challenges that need a new approach.

Today's business challenges are more global and complex than ever and need to be addressed in a new way. Our traditional way of thinking in terms of "or" because we start from the assumption that anything must be A or B but never both at the same time is now wrong. We need to start thinking in temes of "and".

Enterprise 2.0 is both about employees and a wider ecosystem. It's about both tool and people because it's a co-evolution. It's about both in the flow and above the flows activities, about structured and unstructured things. It has not to owned and led by any corporate department but by the whole enterprise (ie all departments may potentially be involved) because it's an enterprise project.... The reason is quite simple : it's about work and work is about dealing with many different things, different contexts at the same time to get things done. Different, not opposite. What  actual work is, what is complementary in employee's workaday activities has to be thought jointly in the solution.

One of the reasons enterprise 2.0 is sometimes so hard to implement, why it's hard to convince everybody, why there's always someone who raises his hand and say" yes...but" is because we often have silos in our minds that makes us think we always have to decide whether A or B while today's business challenges are mainly about A and B.

Comments

Submitted by Mike Ricard July 25, 2010 - 3:14 AM

Bertrand, you are correct. It does start in the minds of individuals. All that conditioning, from school into our work lives, it has always been 'A or B'. We have all been taught to sit in tidy rows, put our hands up when wishing to speak and to remain perfectly silent at all other times.

What would Education 2.0 be like if it was to be rolled out to kids today? It would likely result in more confident and assertive individuals who believe they each have something of value to contribute.

We are trying to persuade people who have had the wrong type of conditioning. It's an uphill struggle, but who said it was going to be easy? Fortunately, a remodelling of neural pathways is happening on the open Web. What businesses have to do is tell their people that those Web 2.0 behaviors are welcome at work too, while at the same time fixing a gag to IT Security. Sure, publish those Social Networking Guidelines, but then let them get on with it. (*BTW, thanks for breaking up your article into paragraphs. I've wanted to comment on previous topics of yours but a single block of text makes them too tedious to read through). Great article.

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