The Hindu Business Line : <I>Silos can wreak havoc</I>

Jude is an eager young management consultant who starts his firm with a lot of `entrepreneurial passion and excitement'. He loves the process of observing real life problems, and trying to solve them. `As is so often the case with people who love their work,' Jude succeeds wildly, making `meaningful contributions to almost every one of his clients'.

One of Jude's first assignments is at JMJ, where he identifies `a few redundant processes that experienced plant managers had overlooked after years on the job'. Factory supervisors who were more accustomed to `cocky management consultants from the high-priced Ivy League firms' are able to trust Jude because of `his willingness to ask simple - sometimes almost embarrassingly simple - questions, and his lack of condescension and pretention'.

Amidst ups and downs in the profession, Jude makes a `discovery' - about how silos "devastate organisations, kill productivity, push good people out the door, and jeopardise the achievement of corporate goals." Silo has other names too, such as `departmental politics, or infighting, or lack of divisional cooperation.'

Silos can wreak havoc. For example, "when the bell staff and the front desk people and the housekeepers and the maintenance guys aren't communicating with each other," what happens? Rooms aren't ready on time because no one downstairs tells anyone upstairs which rooms they need first. Someone's TV isn't working and they call the front desk to complain. And when the maintenance guy can't get there in less than three minutes, the guest calls back to the front desk and the clerk down there blames the maintenance guy... You can't hide this stuff from guests. They're going to notice." Jude diagnoses the problem as a case of each one receiving different messages from the boss about what's important.

Silos rise up because executives fail to provide themselves and their employees `with a compelling context for working together,' explains Lencioni. The solution begins with a thematic goal - "a single, qualitative focus that is shared by the entire leadership team and that applies for only a specified time period."

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