Less Chatter, More Matter: The Communications Podcast

#133 Overcoming the silos - how to build bridges through comms

• Season 1 • Episode 133

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Have you ever been halfway through a project only to discover priorities have shifted? Or chasing information from another team that never comes? Maybe you feel like no one really knows what your team does.

These are all symptoms of a siloed culture and while silos often start at the top, communicators can play a vital role in breaking them down.

In this episode, we share four practical strategies to help bridge the gaps that silos create; we chat about building a single source of truth to amplify more leadership voices, empowering employees to share updates, and holding the C-suite accountable.

So... if you're ready to get collaborating across your organisation, instead of yelling into the abyss - tune in to learn how communication can cut through silos, build trust, and keep people aligned.

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Have you ever been in a situation where you were working away on something only to find out later that priorities had changed and you had just wasted a bunch of time, or you needed information from another team in the business and you just can't get it? Or you have absolutely no idea what any other team in the business is doing, or maybe you feel like nobody else in the business knows what you do? Chances are you are not alone. Well, actually you kind of are, because all these are examples of dreaded siloed culture. Siloed cultures are those workplaces where teams just don't talk to each other, and it usually starts right at the top with the C-suite who set the tone. The problem with siloed cultures is it leads to siloed communication, and that has all sorts of terrible impacts on engagement, strategic progress, and sometimes people's safety. So how can comms help to overcome some of the hurdles thrown up by silos? That's what today's episode is all about. Hi, friend, and welcome to today's episode of Less Chatter, More Matter, the Communication podcast. I'm your host, Mel Loy, and I'm recording this episode on the lands of the Yuggera and Turrbal people here in Meanjin, also known as Brisbane. And today's episode is all about how comms can help bridge the inter-team gaps created by a siloed culture. Why am I doing this topic? Well... Because I've seen it so many times before. When we do internal comms audits, silos are often challenges that pop up. And here's the thing. Many companies have great comms teams, sometimes within departments, sometimes at the group comms level, sometimes both. But that doesn't stop silos from happening because they are a symptom of a culture. They are not a symptom of communication. But siloed cultures usually lead to siloed communication, and that can mean that people on the front line end up bombarded with a bunch of different messages, and sometimes those messages themselves are conflicting or they end up with no messages at all when they could really use that information to help inform their work. Silos also lead to redundant work, missed opportunities and conflicting priorities. But more importantly, it becomes really obvious that the leaders at the top are not aligned, and that erodes trust, which makes it really hard to get change done and build engagement. Now, as I said, comms alone cannot solve this issue, particularly if it's role modeled at the very top of the organisation. But we can help create some bridges and put a bit of a dint in the armor. So today I'm going to share some ways that communication can help make sure that people throughout an organisation feel well informed and that they're getting the information they need at the right time. So there's four tips I'm going to share with you today, and the first one is create one source of truth. This is about creating a central channel that becomes that one source that everybody knows to go to, to get the information they need. Now, this could be an intranet news hub, a weekly Viva Engage blast, a fortnightly email that features the top three to five key updates from a business unit, whatever. Whatever it is, it needs to be accessible to the whole organisation and feature and update from every part of the business. And that's important because that's what makes this work. Now why this works is because it avoids that broken communication cascade. So the communication cascade, if you're not familiar, is the idea that we provide information to leaders and then they are meant to share it with their direct reports, and they're meant to share it with their direct reports and blah, blah, blah, until it reaches the frontline. It is a nice idea in theory, and it makes sense because we know that a person's direct leader is their most trusted voice, so you do want them to have those conversations and pass on information. But we also know the cascade is broken. There's what's called this permafrost layer around the middle management level of organisations. And after that, essentially only up to about a third of information actually gets through to the front line. And that's not all. Oftentimes information is passed on with no context, and the leader doesn't add anything. That gives people an understanding of why is this relevant? What does this mean for our team? Now that break in the cascade can happen for many reasons. So for example, leaders are just too busy and overwhelmed to get to every single piece of comms that comes to their inbox, or they can't see the relevance themselves. We haven't made it easy for them to share, et cetera, et cetera, but whatever the reason it exists, so we need to deal with it. So while top down comms is still important, we need to provide a bottom up communication channel that goes directly to the frontline and allows them to self-serve their comms. The other part of creating a very public shared channel that highlights inputs from every department. Is that it becomes very obvious when one department hasn't provided any inputs or is providing substandard insights into the value they're bringing to the organisation, and no C-Suite leader wants to feel like they are behind the other leaders. It essentially shines a spotlight on them, and it shines a spotlight in places they don't want. Whether that changes anything or not will remain to be seen, but I guarantee that more often than not, those people do not want to feel embarrassed. Now again, this only works if you make it easy for people to share their inputs, so provide a template or three questions they have to answer or ask them to delegate it to someone in their department. Making it easy is going to make your job much easier in compiling that comms every week or fortnight or whatever your frequency is. Tip number two is share the C-suite load. So what I mean by this is oftentimes the all company communication tends to come just from the CEO, and whether that's an email, a video, a town hall, whatever, it's just the CEO who puts their name to it and shares the news. But what if you shared that responsibility around? So apart from the fact the CEO might appreciate a break from doing a weekly email or video, if you have a rotating roster of each C-suite member being responsible for group wide comms, each week you start to create a more aligned feel across that team. It gives them an opportunity, or maybe it forces them to participate, whatever, but it gives them that opportunity to share what's happening in their area of the business. Now you would also still include any necessary group wide news, but the rest is up to them to populate and share what their team is doing. You could even get creative with this, like have a podcast or vlog episodes where you interview C-suite members individually or have two of them being interviewed at the same time. The trick will be how you position this with them so that you get their participation. Now, this is obviously all about knowing your audience and what is important to them, but some of the things you could mention are A helping C-suite leaders to build their personal brands in the business, or giving them an opportunity to have the spotlight on the great work their team is doing. Helping others in the organisation understand the value their team adds to the business. Basically, don't mention the part about breaking down silos, but rather make it about why this is good for them and their part of the business. Now tip number three is to put the comms back in the hands of team members and focus your efforts more on the channels that promote two-way or multi-way communication. So basically this is circumventing the C-suite and getting the team members themselves to share information between departments. The effort here is in getting people to use these channels in the way you want them to use 'em. So you will have to find a few people in each department who can start to role model this behavior, and you're gonna have to support them and coach them. Uh, you could use channels like a Yammer channel if that still exists, or Viva engage, maybe develop an interactive wiki or even find ways that people can share voice notes and short videos. I also like the idea of creating cross-department information squads. I know that sounds a little bit like the KGB or the Spanish Inquisition, but hear me out. In too many organisations, especially when people are on the tools all day, they don't often have a chance to cross collaborate. In many cases, there are organisations and teams who actually start the day with toolbox talks, and these are great ways to bring everyone up to speed quickly. Um, in others, particularly in project teams, they'll have their daily standup meetings, which are 15 minute updates, where you identify any blockers, share news, et cetera. Now you could create a similar daily or even weekly standup that has representatives from different teams around the business to join in and share what's happening. So this is especially important when teams in different departments rely on each other for inputs into their work. So imagine a 20 minute meeting with five people, one from each department. They bring to the meeting a quick update that is relevant to the others in the squad, what might be happening that day that could impact them, and then they are then responsible for going back and sharing what they've learned with the rest of their team in whatever way works for their team. Now again, it's about democratising the communication process and making it available to everyone, not just the C-Suite. It also helps to instill a culture where internal communication is considered everyone's responsibility, not just the internal comms team. That's really important. Okay, tip number four. My final tip for today is to put the C-suite in the hot seat. Now, sometimes you need to make people a little uncomfortable before they will act. The first part of this tip is actually getting the data or the evidence or the feedback that shows the siloed situation and more importantly, the impact that's having throughout the organisation. So that could be impacts on productivity, engagement, customer service, et cetera. It's likely there are many impacts. This is about making the business case for why things need to change. It's not necessarily saying you are really bad at your jobs, and this is why. It's more about, here's an issue that's been identified and here's the business impact it's having. That's bad for everybody. Here's some potential solutions, but what could you do as senior leaders to help address this? You want to coach them into coming up with some solutions so they have that public commitment and they have skin in the game. You could also set up some very frank discussions where the whole C-Suite is in the room like a virtual... Room or otherwise, and people can ask questions anonymously. Now, why do I say anonymous? Because we all know that people won't ask the hard questions out loud in front of other people, and especially in situations where you've got a siloed culture, it's usually likely that you are also going to have very low trust in senior leadership too. So while you are rebuilding that trust, you're going to need to deal with anonymity for a while. But what this does, it usually unearths some of the really deep seated issues that are caused by siloed cultures and helps to shine a light on them. And again, it can also force these leaders to make a public commitment to fixing the issue. Okay, folks, it's time for today's episode recap. So if your brain wandered away there for a bit, now's a good time to come back. Today's episode was all about how we can use communication strategies to help overcome some of the hurdles caused by siloed cultures. The strategies I shared are number one, create a one source of truth channel that is accessible to everyone, right down to the front line. This is about circumnavigating that broken cascade and tapping into the ego of your senior executives who don't want to be left out in a very public way. Number two is share the C-suite load. Don't make it all about the CEO. Share the love around with the other C-suite members, which forces them to share what's going on in their area of the business. Number three, use more, two-way accessible communication channels that democratise the communication process. This will require a little bit of experimentation to see what sticks, but it's worth trying. And again, this is about overcoming that broken comms cascade. And number four, put the C-suite in the hot seat. Show them the data and the feedback that points to the business impacts of their current way of working. It can also be something like an ask us anything where leaders answer in a live forum, questions that have been submitted anonymously. And that's usually a really good way to highlight where the issues are. All right, team. That's all we have time for on today's episode. Thanks for tuning into another show. I really appreciate you being here. And don't forget, my new book is currently out and for every review that's left on Amazon or LinkedIn, I'm donating one hour of my time to support DV Connect. They are a nonprofit organisation that offers a range of services, predominantly for women, but also for men who are experiencing family or domestic violence and need support to get out of that situation. And set themselves up for a new life. So I'm donating consulting time to them to help them with their messaging and a few other things. Right now the tally is at 12 hours, so if you have read my new book, please go leave a review and that will just keep adding to the time that I give to this amazing organisation. Alright, team, that's it for today. Keep doing amazing things and bye for now.