One of the most pernicious problems in organizations of any size is siloization.
You know how it happens. As the company gets bigger, it breaks into well-defined departments that slowly lose touch with each other.
But it’s not just that departments grow apart. Often a subtle suspicion develops between the departments, based in lack of understanding of what other people are working on.
The in-group/out-group dynamics so deeply wired in our human brains come into play. The members of one department start to think their team is putting in the most hours and doing the most vital work.
The fly on the wall hears things like:
Sure, all the departments do stuff, but this company would be nothing without [my department].
Do the people over in [other department] even work anymore?
Man, I’ve got nothing against [other department], but they should really be doing [XYZ].
That kind of thinking - even if it’s generally unspoken - is absolutely disastrous for the organization as a whole. This makes it a concern of the CEO.
What It Means to Market Your Department
It’s not that your employees are bad or untrusting people. When people don’t know what other departments are actually doing, they fill in the blanks with assumptions, usually bad ones.
The solution is a form of proactive transparency I call “marketing your department.”
Just as your business must market its offerings to consumers, each of your executives must, as part of their role, “market” their department to the rest of the organization. This means three things:
1. Posting goals and metrics.
The executive posts the three to five goals their department is working on each quarter where everyone can see them - on bulletin boards, in shared software, wherever makes sense for your organization. At previous companies I have led, I expected all department heads to define their goals in a way everyone could understand, then post these along the hallways. The posted goals and metrics became the instrumentation panel of the organization, providing clarity as the company forged through the chaos inherent in any commercial activity.
2. Knowing the elevator pitch.
The executive can explain what their department does and why in terms anyone can understand, and shares that information abundantly with peers, leadership, and their own team. No one wants to see your sixty-slide PowerPoint. Cut out the noise and get to the signal: What’s critical for your peers across the company to know?
3. Regular updates.
As the quarter progresses and metrics change, the executive keeps the information current. Outdated goals on a dusty poster accomplish nothing (and might actually achieve the opposite of what you want to).
Getting to the Right Metrics
As CEO, it’s up to you to help each executive define the metrics that each executive should focus on and market to the rest of the organization.
The best way to arrive at great metrics is to have conversations with the executive where you continue to ask why certain metrics best reflect the performance of the department. Ask questions like “Why does this department exist?” and “What business value does this department need to create?”
Once the metrics are agreed upon, that’s when they go up on signs and/or in shared software for all to see. (It also helps employees IN the department be reminded what matters most to their own success.)
Making the Metrics Understandable
As executives share their metrics, they must remember that this is a marketing exercise. Thus, if any of a department’s goals or their measurements contain specialized language or jargon, they should restate the outward-facing version so people from any corner of the organization can follow the essential meaning. Use “earnings” instead of “EBITDA,” keeping in mind the junior designer who might not have any idea what that clumsy group of letters stands for.
Also do your best to foresee potential misunderstandings. Imagine that you internally publicize that you’re aiming to raise the Net Promoter Score to 65. What happens when a software engineer checks out your goals? They might think: Raise it to 65? That sounds like a terrible score. Do those people over in customer success even know what they’re doing? Instead, phrase the goal so it’s clear that an NPS of 65 is excellent.
Handling Pushback
“You should do XYZ.”
Once an executive starts marketing their department, they may notice that other people in the company have lots of ideas about how their team should be run. It’s very easy to say, “Sales should do XYZ” when you work in an entirely different department.
(We Americans see this a lot in politics - everyone has an opinion on what the president should do, even if they wouldn’t actually do those things if they were the one sitting in the Oval Office.)
When your peers in the company express ideas about what your team should be doing, take time to grant the suggestion its fair due. Often you will find that the easiest answer from the outside isn’t the best answer, and you may need to communicate why you’re operating in a certain way again and again. The best executives are able to articulate their reasoning in a way that takes outside ideas and criticisms seriously, enlightens others as to their perspective, and doesn’t verge into defensiveness.
Siloization isn’t inevitable.
When departments actively market themselves, they replace speculation with understanding. The effort falls on executives, but the CEO must lead the effort. Done well, this transparency turns your company’s instrumentation panel from a mystery into a shared map that helps everyone navigate to the right destination together.