Healthcare organizations tend to be highly departmentalized. For example, they may have departments for medical specialties such as cardiology, endocrinology, gastroenterology, infectious diseases, oncology, and rheumatology — and for business functions such as medical records, billing, human resources, security, and media relations. Departments streamline operations, enhance efficiency, and create manageable work units. They simplify recruitment, training, and performance evaluation, and allow for quick change, expansion, and growth. It would seem, too, that departmentalization enhances employees’ work experience by dividing them into smaller teams where they can form strong bonds and deepen their sense of belonging.
Despite these advantages, departmentalization also leaves healthcare organizations vulnerable to workplace silos, a mindset and way of operating that has many potential drawbacks. Sabu VU(1) says, “The fragmentation or departments within health institutions creates silos that hinder collaboration, communication, and efficiency, leading to suboptimal patient care and organizational outcomes.” Tom Oliver(2) warns that silos are “tribalism disguised as specialization.” Oliver says, “Your enemy isn’t external competition — it’s internal division … Call them departments, units, regions, or teams — it doesn’t matter. When they stop talking to each other, your business starts dying from the inside out.”
We will explore the potential disadvantages of silos in the next section. As you’ll see, silos can become a huge and costly problem because they can undermine team performance.
The Trouble with Silos
The concept of workplace silos is borrowed from agriculture to describe physical and nonphysical boundaries that arise between divisional units of an organization. The word silo traditionally refers to a tall tower used on a farm to store grain. Each silo has its own purpose and operates independently. Grain stored in one silo does not mix with grain in other silos, even though the structures may stand side by side. Siloed teams in the workplace function the same way. They operate in relative isolation from one another, and there may be little to no effort for them to mix, collaborate, or communicate with other siloed teams. Unfortunately, siloed organizations can experience a host of costly problems. For example:
Narrow focus. Workplace silos create an environment where departments become myopically focused on their own tasks and responsibilities. Milton Campbell(3) warns, “While this may seem like a recipe for increased efficiency, it actually hampers productivity in the long run.” Siloed teams focus so much on their own trees that they often miss the forest in which they grow. They lack a sorely needed holistic point of view. Resources that could better be used elsewhere in the organization sadly end up being wasted. Important opportunities go unnoticed or slip through the cracks, leading to stagnation.
Stifled innovation. Thriving healthcare teams require input from diverse perspectives. Lacking that input, they can get stuck in their own silo’s echo chamber. Profit.co(4) says when this happens, “creativity takes a hit.”
Redundant or duplicative work. Siloed teams may unknowingly work on the same tasks, wasting time and resources. They may embark on reinventing the wheel, unaware that another team in the organization already has invented it. Productivity suffers when employees waste their time. Paola Pascual(5) warns, “Every minute an employee spends searching for relevant answers is time they could be spending adding value.”
Fragmented work. Each siloed team works in isolation, unaware of how their work aligns with other departments or larger organizational objectives. Campbell says, “This fragmentation leads to disjointed processes, inconsistent messaging, and a lack of collaboration.” Ultimately, fragmented work can misalign team priorities, slow progress, and inhibit the organization’s ability to adapt and respond to challenges.
Conflicts. There may be clashes between siloed teams as they try to achieve their goals. The Knowledge Hub(6) warns, “This can lead to a breakdown in communication and adversely affect organizational performance.” Siloed teams often mistrust other teams and engage in power struggles that ultimately hurt everyone. It’s easy for them to develop an “us vs. them” mentality.
Less-than-optimal customer experiences. The internal gears of any organization grind against one another when siloed thinking runs rampant. The customer in healthcare (the patient) ultimately will feel the effect. Campbell says, “Customers may encounter confusion, delays, or even receive conflicting information from different departments.” Consider your own frustrations as a consumer who at some time was bounced from department to department in a business or organization in search of a resolution to a problem. How many times have you been passed off to someone in another department who then made you repeat your story, only to pass you on to someone else? Such run-around experiences will wear down customers, erode trust and loyalty, lower satisfaction, and jeopardize the organization’s reputation.
What Causes Silos?
Unfortunately, healthcare organizations are excellent silo breeding grounds precisely because they tend to be so highly departmentalized. There are many factors that cause siloed teams, but we categorize them as problems of social identity, structural design, and communication.
Social Identity Problems
Social identity theory can suggest that silos develop in healthcare organizations as an outcome of medical enculturation and in-group formation. There are inevitable divisions in healthcare through which members of the larger group derive meaning, self-esteem, and standards of practice. Francis Bakewell(7) explains, “In healthcare, this process starts early in training and becomes fixed as providers become progressively specialized.”
Understanding silos through a social identity lens can explain but complicate our thinking about silos. A strong professional identity in healthcare yields obvious benefits but also can cause divisiveness. For example, Bakewell says, family physicians who see themselves primarily as lifelong caregivers may adopt a holistic approach to patient care. Internists, on the other hand, may identify themselves primarily as diagnosticians who ensure thorough evaluations, even in routine cases. Unfortunately, these and other differences in perspective, attitude, routines, and norms can foster suspicion, misunderstandings, and an unwillingness or inability to coordinate care with those who don’t share one’s identity and values. Bakewell says, “It has been proposed that the same conditions that enhance productivity within a speciality may constrain collaboration with those from different specialities.”
From a social identity perspective, we find that a naturally positive phenomenon — the development of a strong sense of professional and personal identity — can lead to barriers between individuals and teams. Profit.co says, “Silos might feel comfortable, but they block the collaboration necessary to innovate and solve big problems.” That “comfort” can explain the persistence of silos in healthcare organizations, and, perhaps, Bakewell says, “why they are ultimately ineradicable.”
Structural Design Problems
The hierarchical and compartmentalized structure of most healthcare organizations also may explain why siloed teams are so common. VU says, “Organizational silos are reinforced by rigid reporting lines, separate budgets, and distinct physical spaces, creating barriers to collaboration and communication across departments.” VU points to four structural factors that cause team silos:
Hierarchical organizational structures. Healthcare organizations typically favor hierarchical organizational charts. Often, these traditional models result in rigid reporting lines and vertical decision-making processes, which can create barriers to collaboration and communication between departments. VU warns, “Partitioned reporting structures may prioritize departmental goals over organizational objectives, leading to competition rather than cooperation among departments.”
Separate budgetary and resource allocation processes. Often, each department has its own budget and resource allocation processes. VU says, “When departments are allocated resources based solely on their individual needs and priorities, rather than the overall goals of the institution, it can incentivize a silo mentality.” Departments often end up prioritizing their own interests at the expense of broader organizational objectives, causing inefficiencies in resource use and hindering cross-departmental collaboration. Leaders must be careful, especially when resources are scarce. Pascual warns, “Workplace silos are created when departments need to fight for resources. They fail to see the bigger picture and the environment becomes competitive.” Bakewell adds that in a resource-limited environment, a combination of “professional identity” and “duty of care” can create more rigid and divided silos.
Physical layout and spatial design. When departments are physically separated from one another or located in different buildings or on different floors, the design can create barriers to informal interactions and impede communication between employees. Additionally, VU says, “The lack of shared spaces or common areas where staff from different departments can come together may further reinforce partitioned behaviors and inhibit collaboration.”
Fragmented information systems. Departments that maintain separate, non-interoperable electronic health record systems and databases can hinder the seamless exchange of information between departments and contribute to disjointed care delivery. VU says, “This fragmentation not only impedes communication and collaboration but also increases the risk of errors and delays in patient care.”
Communication Problems
Effective communication is essential for promoting collaboration and coordination among workplace teams. However, siloed teams operate as isolated entities with limited interaction and information sharing. A primary contributor to silos is the existence of partitioned communication channels. VU says, “Departments often develop their own communication norms, practices, and technologies, leading to limited interaction with other departments.” A partitioned approach to communication can result in communication hoarding, miscommunication, and a lack of awareness about the activities and needs of other departments. Range(8) warns that when information sharing isn’t prioritized, “People don’t know who’s working on [what], what’s being prioritized, and why decisions are being made, which can create mistrust across teams, misaligned priorities, and duplicative streams of work.” Even with the best of intentions, Campbell adds, poor communication can cause unnecessary tension and create “a hostile work environment.”
A lack of interdisciplinary communication further can exacerbate departmental isolation. Healthcare professionals often communicate primarily within their own disciplinary groups, with limited opportunities for cross-disciplinary interaction and collaboration. VU warns, “This compartmentalization of communication can impede the exchange of diverse perspectives and hinder innovation in patient care.” Fear of change also can make employees wary of new interdisciplinary communication initiatives and systems, Campbell says, for fear of job losses or other negative outcomes.
Broken feedback loops also contribute to silos. Range warns, “When feedback isn’t part of your team’s fabric, folks might feel like they’re walking on eggshells when something isn’t working and continue operating that way despite problems.” Without a solid feedback system in place and a regular cadence for employees to check in with one another, teams and individuals naturally start to operate in silos and collaboration takes a hit. Blame is more likely to occur, too. Campbell warns, “One of the biggest sources of silos is the blame game. When departments or teams feel like they’re in competition with one another, finger-pointing and blame can become the norm.”
A number of cultural barriers to communication additionally contribute to team silos. Professional hierarchies, power dynamics, rivalries, entrenched norms, territorial behaviors, and a lack of trust reinforce siloed thinking. Silos are more likely to form in organizations where leaders don’t communicate and collaborate with one another. This is noteworthy because siloed thinking often comes from the top down. Oliver says, “A C-suite must visibly model cross-functional respect and information-sharing.” Moreover, a general lack of leadership can cause silos. Campbell explains, “When leaders fail to communicate a clear mission or vision for the organization, individuals may become more focused on their own team’s success rather than the bigger picture.”
Finally, technological limitations can encourage silos. VU explains, “Outdated or incompatible communication systems, lack of interoperability between electronic health records, and inadequate training on communication tools may hinder information exchange and coordination between departments.” Sometimes, a persistent reliance on paper-based communication methods or outdated technologies encourages silos. While older technologies may still work, Mark Wilson(9) warns, “these old systems are hurting today’s organizations precisely because they are reinforcing the ‘data island’ and siloed nature of data.”
How to Break the Silo Mentality
You will need to understand the specific nature of your team’s silo mentality before you can hope to break it. For example, Pascual( )asks, “Is there a lack of communication between departments? Do team members not understand each other’s roles? Are your teams struggling with cross-cultural communication? Do some of your employees need support to communicate more effectively in English?” Does your team mistrust those who operate outside their silo? Ask your team to enlighten you if you don’t know the answers to these questions. Of course, you can create and administer a survey. However, a face-to-face conversation with your team will be more effective.
Once you’ve defined your team’s silo mentality, commit to changing it. Keep in mind, however, that breaking a team’s silo mentality will not be simple or easy. Calls for better collaboration, communication, and shared identity may fall on deaf ears or be ignored or forgotten. Bakewell suggests that breaking a silo mentality goes against “the entrenched social and moral forces reinforcing silo divisions.” Therefore, you must be firm, clear, and direct about breaking down silos, and approach the task with vigor. Help your team understand that you expect things to change and why, and that you mean what you say.
The three best ways to break down a silo mentality are to strengthen transparency, encourage open communication, and create more and better pathways for collaboration. These tactics also will help you to prevent new silos from forming.
Strengthen Transparency
Silos form when teams or departments don’t know what other teams and departments are doing. Therefore, strengthening transparency should be your first priority. Here are four ways to strengthen transparency among your siloed teams:
Implement cross-team check-ins. Regular status updates and check-ins shared across teams and departments will help employees stay aligned, informed, and connected. Range says, “They help big teams and departments stay in sync (and sane), especially when there’s a lot going on.” By facilitating a transparent flow of information, Campbells says, you will break down barriers and help to build stronger relationships across the organization.
Create and use standardized project specifications. Consistent, standardized project specifications and one-page summaries can help teams to create better alignment and open the door for more collaboration. Project report templates can be very helpful.
Establish an update schedule. Do not allow employees to share their updates whenever they get to doing them or only you ask them. Establish, monitor, and enforce a schedule.
Allow the free flow of information. Of course, you need to protect confidentiality and follow sensible precautions for information-sharing. Not every employee needs to or should know everything. However, allow your teams to share as much information as is reasonable.
Encourage Open Communication
Proactive, open team communication prevents and breaks down silos. Range says, “Investing in psychological safety can help you build a culture where folks feel more comfortable speaking up and sharing ideas that, in turn, will encourage more collaboration and sharing across teams.” Here are five ways to encourage open communication:
Build trust and understanding. Building trust takes time. Start each day or week with a quick check-in to see how everyone on your team is doing. Range explains, “This practice strengthens psychological safety by showing everyone that it’s OK to open up and be real with each other.” Another excellent way to encourage employees to share how they are feeling is to model the behavior. Range says, “If you’re having a hard day, say so. If you’re distracted by something outside of work, let them know.” By modeling this kind of sharing, you will create a work environment where employees feel that it is safe to be honest with one another about what’s going on.
Facilitate team-building exercises. Ask a mix of questions and create activities that aren’t related directly to work to help employees learn about one another’s passions and preferences. Focus on exercises that allow everyone to participate.
Give regular, frequent feedback. Share with your team both what you see them doing well and how they can improve.
Establish interdisciplinary communication forums. For example, VU suggests creating opportunities for healthcare professionals from different departments to come together to “share information and collaborate on patent care” through interdisciplinary rounds, case conferences, and team building meetings. Have regular all-team meetings and town halls to talk about priorities and how you expect departments to interface. Make these open sessions where employees can ask questions and raise concerns.
Encourage coffee chats. Neha Naik(10) says, “These can be department-wide meetings or one-on-one chats. This allows for team building, creative thinking, brainstorming and overall clearer communication across teams.”
Create More and Better Pathways for Collaboration
Silos are more likely to occur when employees must go out of their way to collaborate. Make it easy for them. Here are nine ways to encourage more collaboration:
Make your organizational objectives clear. Sharing clear organizational objectives helps teams see how everything they do is connected to your larger organization. Show them how each department fits into the larger picture and explore with them ways that they can work more collaboratively to achieve your objectives. Reorient your staff’s focus away from themselves and toward structures that promote best patient outcomes, Bakewell says, “even if this requires novel approaches or significant departmental dismantling and restructuring.”
Embrace collaborative technology tools. Oliver urges, “Make visibility default, not optional.” Leverage project management software, communication platforms, document collaboration tools, centralized dashboards, and weekly alignment calls to facilitate seamless communication and information sharing. Campbell says, “These tools ensure real-time updates, streamline workflows, and break down the barriers of physical distance and departmental boundaries.”
Make collaboration a requirement. Employees may not realize that you require them to keep up with what other teams are doing and to seek opportunities for cross-team collaboration. Make this clear. For example, Oliver says, “Require every department head to report on how their function contributed to enterprise-wide goals — not just their silo metrics.”
Conduct regular collaboration shoutouts. Spend five minutes each week highlighting moments when teams in your organization broke silos to help one another. Regular shoutouts, Oliver says, will shift your culture “from competition to cooperation.”
Promote interdisciplinary education and training. VU suggests that interdisciplinary education and training will foster “a shared understanding of roles, responsibilities, and perspectives” across departments. Peer-to-peer learning also can foster collaboration. Cloud Interact(11) suggests, “Encourage departments to share insights, best practices, and lessons learned through structured programs like mentorships or lunch-and-learns.”
Encourage employees from all departments to socialize outside of work. Create events for them that require cross-silo interaction, such as bowling and sports teams.
When possible, break down physical barriers to collaboration. Breaking down physical barriers will foster more natural communication and provide more organic face-to-face interaction. Susan Laoyan(12) says, “This means embracing the open floor plans and adding intentional space for collaboration moments, such as communal spaces beyond just conference rooms.”
Teach your employees how to collaborate. Give and take is a major ingredient of collaboration. Teach your employees to think of interdepartmental relationships as a two-way street. Samantha Ferguson(13) warns, “If you take more than you give, goodwill may quickly evaporate.”
Create incentives. Incentives align priorities and provide tangible reasons for teams to work together. Cloud Interact suggests, “Encourage departments to collaborate by tying performance metrics or incentives to shared goals.” Make collaboration part of your regular performance and salary reviews.
Overcoming Resistance and Leading the Change
Employees don’t create silos on purpose. They may not realize that they are working in a silo. Or they may see nothing wrong with silos if they do. Therefore, you can count on pushback when you broach the subject of silos with your team. Campbell warns, “Breaking down the silo mentality can be a challenging task, no doubt about it. Change tends to encounter resistance.”
Be very careful when you speak with your team about silos, because you’ll want to do so in a way that will lower their resistance, not fan the flames of it. To begin with, share with your team the siloed thinking and behavior that you have observed in your organization. Give them specific examples. Then, ask them to describe the silos they’ve seen and experienced, too. Explore with them how they feel about silos. Next, describe the pitfalls of silos and the benefits of breaking down silo barriers to improve productivity, foster creativity, and achieve better results. Most importantly, ask your team to explore with you how breaking silos may improve both your patients’ experiences and their own work life. Don’t lecture them. Campbell suggests, “Encourage open dialogue and provide a safe space for them to voice their concerns and share their ideas.” Make sure everyone feels heard and valued. Break larger teams into smaller groups for the greatest impact. Victor Anaya(14) explains, “Often, rather than staging large meetings where a lot of people end up sitting through discussions that are irrelevant to them, the best approach is to establish smaller meetings….”
Address your team’s concerns and misconceptions head-on before proceeding. Do whatever you can to make them want to break down their silo walls. Change can be scary, and it’s normal for people to worry about the impact change, even a positive one, may have on their roles and their workloads. Take the time necessary to address your team’s concerns and provide reassurance. Help your team to see that by breaking down silos, they can help to foster innovation, enhance their problem-solving capabilities, and ultimately, provide a better experience for everyone.
Sidebar:
Breaking Down Silos with Cross-Functional Teams: 10 Strategies
Cross-functional teams may be a powerful way for you to overcome silos and promote collaboration. They bring together employees from different departments, allowing them to work together on short-term projects or initiatives. Or they may become permanent teams. Either way, leveraging the diverse expertise and perspectives of team members will enable you to tackle challenges from multiple viewpoints, identify hidden problems, and generate innovative solutions.
Many sources advocate that leaders create and foster cross-functional teams. For example, Campbell says, “Breaking down the walls between departments creates a united front, where everyone can contribute their unique skills towards a common goal.” Oliver says, “When you give a shared goal to a diverse team, the collaboration becomes baked into the process.” And Profit.co says, “Bringing together people with different skills and expertise leads to better problem-solving … Together, they see the full picture.” Below are 10 strategies to develop the most effective cross-functional teams.
Create the ideal team. Build the best and strongest cross-functional team by selecting cooperative members with expert knowledge in their departments and specialties. Joseph Wabwile Wanyama(15) says, “It’s tempting to simply choose the top performers from each department. But someone who excels in their siloed role may not necessarily thrive in a collaborative, fast-changing, cross-functional setup.” Recruit cross-functional team members who have expertise and who are hard-wired to work across boundaries.
Create cross-functional projects. One of the best ways to break down silos is to get teams working together on real, meaningful projects that will benefit everyone. However, Profit-co warns, “These can’t feel like ‘extra’ work.” Collaboration must be designed into people’s roles and responsibilities from the start, with clear goals and measurable outcomes. Clearly define your project goals. Then, get your team members excited about what they are about to accomplish together.
Name the team. Give your cross-functional team a name to help members create a sense of belonging and purpose. The name can come from leadership or from the team itself.
Establish leadership. Someone needs to take charge of direction for a cross-functional team. but not in the traditional “command and control” sense. Wanyama says, “You need a leader who can guide, align, and enable, not to give orders.” This leadership role can be fixed (a team lead or project manager) or shared (rotating responsibility).
Define roles. Ambiguity is the enemy of cross-functional teams. Wanyama warns, “The moment people are unclear about what they’re supposed to do (or think someone else is doing it), things start slipping through the cracks.” Spell out what each team member is responsible for not only in terms of tasks, but how their work supports the broader project objective. Team members must be able to see the impact of their work on the team’s success, not just on their own functional area.
Establish communication protocols. Set boundaries and expectations for how and when the team communicates. What tools will they use? How often will they meet? In person or virtually? Who needs to be involved in which conversations? How will decisions be made and by whom?
Establish success criteria and timelines. Define these both for the team and for each member.
Create the team’s culture. Functional teams typically inherit cultural norms from their departments. Cross-functional teams, on the other hand, start with a cultural blank slate. That means that if you don’t actively shape the team’s culture from Day One, its members will default to their own departmental mindsets, which often will clash. Wanyama says, “Start by defining shared cultural beliefs — not abstract values, but practical behaviors that guide how team members work with one another.”
Align timelines. Every department has its own way of working, and some have strict timelines. Ask cross-functional team members to share this information with one another. Wanyama warns, “If you try to force everyone into one master timeline without respecting these rhythms, you’ll run into constant delays, confusion, and missed handoffs.”
Establish confidentiality guidelines. Members of cross-functional teams may become privy to information about other departments and divisions in the organization. Be very clear about what members can share and what must remain confidential when they get back to their units. Keep in mind that team members may be asked a lot of questions when they return to their own departments. Cross-functional team members must feel free to share relevant sensitive information with one another at their meetings without fear that confidential or sensitive information will fall into the wrong hands.
References
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