Making Silos Work for Your Organization

The incitement to “bust” or “break down” organizational silos appears frequently in practitioner and scholar journals. While they can inhibit collaboration — or even lead to turf wars — verticals exist for good reasons: to aggregate expertise, assign accountability and provide a sense of identity. To preserve their strengths while minimizing the side effects, the authors argue that companies should 1) build bridges and 2) institute checks and balances. They offer a number or practical ways to do this.