Not that I think you haven’t thought about this, but … the only solution that I know of is to create a higher level logic than the viewpoints that the competing managers are coming from. In practice this means getting everyone to design together, and to seek solutions that address all their various and possibly conflicting viewpoints. The impetus to do this may come from a level of management above where the siloed conflicts are. However, sometimes the underlying problem is that top management endorses the silos, either tacitly or explicitly, and therefore is giving mixed messages.

In our experience, innovation projects cannot thrive in mixed-message environments, so this is a subject to take up with the CEO. You might as well be totally honest, in that your project probably won’t succeed unless you can break the logjam.

I hope that helps …

I’m struggling with the ‘how.’ There is no business model and ‘how to’ to help orgs go from siloed to innovative across traditional departments. I’m facing this now with a client and they are working on a super cool project across siloes. Each of the department managers are still trying to controlling their piece of the pie and they are having an difficult and confusing time of it– their stakeholders will still hold them responsible for outcomes even though they aren’t responsible for the direction… Do you have any posts and stories about how you helped ‘silo-bust’ an org and lived to tell about it?

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