Through interactions with leaders of successful digital transformations, the McKinsey company found out there are two primary symptoms of a heavily siloed organisation.
- Inadequate information or a complete lack of it.
- Insufficient accountability or problematic coordination of initiatives which are enterprise-wide.
Are your staff well informed about the broader context and environment in which your company is active? If this is not the case, they are more likely to overlook or fail to spot in time some potential disruption of or an opportunity offered by digital tools.
Aligned information is essential
If several sections of your company think that digital priorities are something quite different, it is high time to supply them with complete information. The problem is that discrepancies and information gaps can lead to a lack of strategic and operating consistency – and your customers will quickly notice this.
To take one example: a special team at a particular company investigated where customers most frequently experienced problems by analysing how the company collected and worked with data across silos. It turned out that customers were cancelling their pre-paid subscriptions because they were contacted by marketing way too often.
The team combined customer databases across silos, centralised access rights and provided training to make everyone more aware of segment-specific needs. It also provided the information to all teams, thus breaking harmful siloed viewpoints.
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