Ugly culture is culture that is fragmented and doesn’t work together.

According to top researchers this is a function of the different mindsets between operational, executive and engineering.

Three viewpoints equal three cultures (requires free registration).

And while I’m certainly not anything like the experts mentioned in the article I don’t believe it’s a given.

I also find the so-called typical mindset of each group to be more a function of the past than the current, let alone future, mindsets, especially of entrepreneurs and those ascending to executive ranks and the top slots of many companies.

Granted, the larger the company the more likely to find those attitudes, but it’s not a given.

The experts see three silos, operational, executive and engineering, completely ignoring multiple other vertical and horizontal silos.

Of course, the article is 11 years old, so the question is ‘does it still apply’?

Does your workplace reflect these three silos or is the current reality far more nuanced?

Flickr image credit: Sam Wolff

Silos—they are found in almost every company no matter the size.

Silos are the scourge of collaboration

The most commonly noticed are departmental silos, but horizontal silos based on position and education are far more insidious and damaging.

I loathe horizontal silos and consider them second only to politics on the corporate stupidity index.

More times than I can count I’ve seen the ideas of an engineer 1 or 2 discounted or ignored by the 3s and senior engineers—of course, that’s better than stealing them, although that happens, too.

The attitude seems to be one of ‘your brain is incapable of any creative thinking until you are at least at my pay grade’, which is beyond idiotic.

People’s brains work differently; some see what is, others see possible improvements and a few see around corners, but that sight has little to do with position.

Steve Jobs saw around the corner of the personal computer market before there was a personal computer market and certainly before he had any credibility what so ever.

And I can personally attest that training and education don’t necessarily play a role. Decades ago I redesigned two street intersections where I lived in San Francisco, but I didn’t suggest the solutions to the traffic engineers—I knew they wouldn’t listen because I have no training.

Instead, I sneaked both ideas in through someone I know who was ‘accepted’ and both solutions are still in effect today.

Silos are built of egos, which is why, vertical or horizontal, they’re so difficult to break down.

The best solution is for CEOs to build a culture that values everybody’s ideas equally, but there’s no guarantee that they will or even that they agree.

Even when they do there’s you can’t count on every executive and others in management roles will embrace the approach.

Technology offers a leg up for bosses who see silos as blockades.

One approach I helped a client implement created an innovation wiki that completely obscured the name, level, grade and even department of the person posting the suggestion.

Each idea had a different ID and confirmation was automatically sent to the poster so they still had bragging rights if it was used or warranted a bonus.

That anonymity leveled the playing field and assured everyone that each idea was considered strictly on its merits, not on the merits of the person who thought of it.

It also encouraged people to post way-outside-the-box ideas without worrying about appearing silly, pushy or arrogant if the idea happened to be outside of their personal expertise.

Finally, when an idea was used, whether all, in part or as a springboard to something else, there was an announcement, kudos and request that the poster step forward and take a bow.

It’s a very popular program.

Productivity skyrocketed as a river of suggestions flowed that offered solutions to long-time problems, ideas for product enhancements and even next-gen products—often from the most unlikely places.

Flickr image credit:  johnny goldstein

Good culture empowers employees, juices creativity, sparks innovation and powers productivity, while bad culture kills them.

Not just lowers or slows them, but kills them dead.

Bad culture kills by instilling fear, stoking mistrust, destroying teams and building silos.

Bad culture always kills the messenger.

The seeds of bad culture are found in your MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) and produce a toxic culture when they grow.

But weeds can be pulled and seeds kept from sprouting.

It’s your choice—it’s always your choice.

Flickr image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/zedbee/103147140/

How many times have you heard it—focus on the customer blah, blah, blah?
How often does it prove to be true?

How many times have you said it— it’s about what the customer wants blah, blah, blah?
How often do you practice it?

For too many companies being customer-centric happens when it’s convenient—if it happens at all.

Enter Reorganize for Resilience: Putting Customers at the Center of Your Business by Ranjay Gulati, the Jaime and Josefina Chua Tiampo Professor of Business at Harvard Business School, who offers a comprehensive, practical and inplementable guide to creating a customer-centric business.

Utilizing an outside-in approach means focusing on delivering something of value to customers, as opposed to focusing on products and sales.

Gulati discusses 5 key levers from both “why” and “how”:

Coordination: Connect, eradicate, or restructure silos to enable swift responses.

Cooperation: Align all employees around the shared goal of customer solutions.

Clout: Redistribute power to “bridge builders” and customer champions.

Capability: Develop employees’ skills at tackling changing customer needs.

Connection: Blend partners’ offerings with yours to provide unique customer solutions.

Gulati is blunt and his approach isn’t for those who prefer incremental change to revolutionary, but it is MAP that will stop many leaders from embracing Reorganize for Resilience—because you can’t implement that in which you don’t sincerely believe.

Since the advice to be customer-centric isn’t new, following it isn’t easy and may actually require difficult, even painful changes to your MAP, so why bother with Reorganize for Resilience?

Because it carries the biggest bottom-line payoff, both short and long-term, in any economy and for any company—from Fortune 50 to the neighborhood copy shop.

Image credit: Harvard Business Publishing

Silos kill, no question about it.

They kill innovation, retard product development, and encourage reinvention of the wheel.

Some companies encourage silos; some have no clue on how to break them down; and a very few don’t have them.

Instead, they have collaboration across not only departments, but also divisions.

3M is such a company, with collaboration embedded deep within its DNA.

3M is one of the few companies in private industry that is still active in basic research; it pays off because the results are immediately available to the R&D groups.

What’s the secret to fostering this kind of culture; to getting disparate individuals and organizations working together?

Collaboration doesn’t happen by accident.

• The company maintains a “…database of technical reports written by the more than 7,000 scientists at the company. Those scientists are spread between a corporate lab devoted to basic research, 40 division labs that essentially form a bridge between that basic science and the market, and 35 international labs.”
• It enables “TechForum, an employee-run organization designed to foster communications between scientists in different labs or divisions.”
• “Three years ago, 3M also created the “R&D Workcenter” networking Web site, which Mitra describes as a “LinkedIn for 3M scientists.”

But 3M knows that all the technology, all the meet-ups and all the talk aren’t always enough—the wrong kind of competition will quickly kill collaboration.

“Such sharing of resources is almost impossible when different units of a company feel they are competing against each other to deliver better financial results or the next breakthrough technology. But at 3M, employees are expected to collaborate—and are evaluated on their success.”

3M clearly tells its employees at all levels that they are expected to share across all boundaries, but just telling people doesn’t always work. It’s easy to share information without the added intelligence that makes the information truly valuable.

So they measure the success of the effort, not just the act. That is very different—it puts the money where the mouth is and taps into employees’ vested self-interest.

Image credit: Wesley Fryer on flickr

Last week I described way to use an innovation wiki to juice creativity and garner ideas from all parts of the company. In the comments Jennifer Brown said, “…[is a] platform across the entire enterprise wherein the innovation “conversation” occurs – not just team by team/vertical by vertical, but across verticals that typically don’t talk to each other (hence leading to silos) or collaborate. …harness the power of the workforce, break the silo’d thinking of functional structures, and revolutionize business models.”

I agree, but done with a small innovative twist an innovation wiki will break down not only departmental silos, but also the insidious horizontal silos that are based on position and education.

Personally, I loathe horizontal silos and consider them second only to politics on the corporate stupidity index.

More times than I can count I’ve seen the ideas of an engineer 1 or 2 discounted or ignored by the 3s and senior engineers—of course, that’s better than stealing them, although that happens, too.

The attitude seems to be one of ‘your brain is incapable of any creative thinking until you are at least at my pay grade’, which is idiotic.

People’s brains work differently; some see what is, others see possible improvements and a few see around corners, but that sight has little to do with position. Steve Jobs saw around the corner of the personal computer market before there was a personal computer market and certainly before he had any credibility what so ever.

Nor is it always about training and education. 20 odd years ago I redesigned two street intersection where I lived in San Francisco, but I didn’t suggest the solutions to the traffic engineers—I knew they wouldn’t listen because I have no training. Instead, I sneaked both ideas in through someone I know who was ‘accepted’ and both are still in effect today.

Silos are built of egos, which is why, vertical or horizontal, they’re so difficult to break down.

The best solution is for the CEO to build a culture that values everybody’s ideas equally, but technology offers a leg up on this.

When building your innovation wiki assign a random ID to each suggestion—sort of like match.com. They must be completely random so that level, grade and even department are totally obscured. Each idea has a different ID, so that when a person’s idea is used the next one is still anonymous; limit access of the actual name to a few top executives.

That anonymity truly levels the playing field and means that each idea is considered strictly on its merits, not on the merits of the person who thought of it. It also encourages people to way outside-the-box thinking and to post ideas without worrying about appearing silly, pushy or arrogant for offering ideas outside of their personal expertise.

Just be sure that the contributors of ideas that are used, whether all, in part or as a springboard to something else, receive plenty of public acknowledgement, kudos and anything else you’re in a position to do.

Your comments—priceless

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Image credit: ZedBee|Zoë Power on flickr