Hello everybody.
And, welcome to another 1 of our agile shorts. I'm joined here by my partners at agile Meridian.
And today, we're gonna talk about ditching the silos. This is episode 48.
This is kind of a continuation from our last, agile short around the idea around knowledge debt.
1 of the things that contributes to knowledge debt is having a lot of silos within your organization.
So we decided that this was gonna be 1 of the continuation topics because a lot of people were wanting to find out more about knowledge debt.
And we said, let's get into something more So I think this is a great topic to cover.
There's a lot of material to cover.
We won't cover it all here today, but we'll we'll touch on a few things around this.
So I just wanted to kind of open this up to the group, and talk about the idea around silos and and how silos can impact and affect the way things happen in an organization and the way things flow within an organization, including knowledge debt that we carried on from last time.
But there there's a there's a couple things out there and I know Kumar, you had you had written up some stuff, earlier, I think this week around some of the areas and some of the things around knowledge that both in terms of measures and things that you can do to kinda figure out what what are the what are the basics?
What am I dealing with today?
What are my measures look like today in terms of how siloing is affecting us?
And then some of the things you can some of the things you can do to to look at tactically to go after to try to improve, how things flow inclusive of how knowledge gets transferred around the organization and removing and reducing the impact of silos within the organization.
Yeah. I think I think, you know, It's it's useful to look at the impact of silos.
You know, what's the impact in terms of organizational efficiency, team morale, team engagement, and knowledge sharing. Right?
And so when you think about about silos from that perspective, 1 of the most I think I think Maybe not the only 1, but 1 of the most, impactful metrics would be how long it takes for teams or individuals in an organization to make a decision.
So sort of like the time to decision metric. Right?
And so if if there were no silos or there, you know, silos were efficiently managed and the flow of information was, was transparent and everyone would would have the latest information to make of the best decision.
The time to that decision would be greatly reduced.
You would only have to sort of have, you know, 2 or 3 people that were involved in that decision making process.
A decision will be made and off you go.
You learn from from the decision that you've made, whether it was a good decision or bad decision, and you get better at it.
However, when you have silos, then tends to increase the time that decisions get made because, well, more people have to see and weigh in on it and you know, and so there's a there's a lag there and that results in operational inefficiencies.
What do you all think about that? Maybe
Yeah.
Johnny, maybe.
Yeah. I think Kumar, Kumar, you and I talked about this before, right before we started this, that, a good indicator is what was mixed in with your comment there, which is the number of people, right, the number of people in those decision making process really impacts, the time it takes to make a decision, not surprising at all.
Because the more people that are involved, the more silos there are per what you said Kumar.
Also, it will take longer, because more people have to agree on on on any decision that needs to happen.
So as much as possible reduce the number of people to the absolute minimum, without inviting the whole world to meetings that will take forever.
And hopefully those decisions get made faster.
Yeah. Chris, any what are your thoughts on that?
Try I'm, you know, 1 thing that to to reduce that number of people, I think you also have to look at trust, right?
And do we trust the people that are making the decisions and do we can we push that down a level?
Right? If we're looking for the VP to make a a decision every time, in our particular silo, then, you know, it gets in the way.
And a lot of times, we can just push that decision down and let the folks that are are, you know, doing the work actually make those decisions.
And a lot of times they know who they need to talk to and what, you know, what's the best as they spread out across those various silos, right, and and do the work.
Yeah. I think there's, there's there's some really great interesting technical and tactical things you can do, to actually measurably improve this.
And I think setting that baseline is really important.
Making sure you understand what current state looks like and maybe understanding a few of the elements, even different types of decisions.
Right? There's different there's there's decisions made because there's a situation And then there's decisions made, that are more strategic in nature or more purposeful or tactical in nature, and measuring those types of things.
But we we talked about this a little bit.
I know the the 4 of us have talked about this in in previous conversations over different different time periods and with different clients.
Some of those things, what are some of those other things you can do tactically to to do this?
You know, we've we've talked about, empowering teams. We've talked about the number of people in the meetings.
What about things around, in terms of the people themselves?
What are the things you can do to help individuals to make them more easily, work across silos as they are because to your point, Kumar, probably not eliminating silos everywhere nor is there really a need to, but we just don't want them to slow things down or to make things more complex.
Yeah. I mean, if you I I agree. If you just eliminate silos, that would be sort of chaotic.
Right? Things probably wouldn't get done. There's -- Right.
--
silos are needed. There there's purpose for them, they provide some structure and some organization within an organization.
However, they shouldn't be a, source of impedance to decision making, to the flow of information, to all those things that we talked about last time, which was these those things build knowledge debt so where information isn't isn't clearly, conveyed to other parties.
Right? So really establishing, to me, establishing clear channels of communication making sure people understand what their roles are.
We talked in past episodes about the dri concept, the directly responsible individual and that applies within a meeting and also within, within, within a team or department or division, right, where where the DRIs where do you go to get decisions, validated, and anyone can be a DRI, because I I think to Chris's point, It's about psychological safety and making sure that decisions gets get pushed to where they need to be made so that decisions don't always go up decisions go down, or it should be made at the appropriate level where the work happens.
Stop there and pause for other common commentary?
I was just gonna be, add there Kumar, in addition to what this, what you said.
The silos also build up uh-uh risk of barriers to access to information which will help you make decisions.
Right? So it is embedded within that clear chance of communication.
But also if you don't have access to the information that you need to make those then you have to pretty much rely on other people for that, which also extends the time it takes to get to an
And that contributes right back to the knowledge that topic we were talking about last time.
That's the direct tie in. Right?
Yep. Absolutely. And also, I think it's useful, you know, these clear channels of communication is to establish, okay, who is the expert in area a or area b or c, not expert, but the the, you know, who makes decisions of this type?
So that you can kind of streamline decision making. Again, the rep you tied to the DRI concept.
That's like a transparency of knowing where to go to for Right? Understanding
who
to go
to for what?
Okay. Yeah.
It's it's sort of creating that culture of transparency that, hey, if I have an issue, if I have a something to share, then I know who I can share it with, of course, my team, but then from there, how does that information get disseminated across to other teams because they they might use it.
They might get value from it. Right?
It it sort of goes back into this, the idea of across functional teams and across functional culture.
And I think the working norms within a company, is like If you're new to a company, every company has their own culture, and if you're in a company that's heavily siloed, then at least in my experience, people will feel lost for a while, because they're within their silo, they're waiting for instructions to come to them.
Where in a company that is, that has, established some working norms around how information is shared I think that that that, learning curve is a lot faster, you know, for a new person to come in, coming in, get assimilated in the culture a bit faster.
Know, what's what's your thought?
It's, yeah, I was gonna ask Chris, you know, around the, the the concept you'd mentioned about empowered teams and what Kumar was talking about What about t shaped people?
Is that something that that can help with this type of situation?
That idea of creating environments that t shaped people can grow and thrive?
Yeah. It helps a lot because you being a t shaped person, you know, you're very deep in 1 particular discipline, but you're you have a broad knowledge across, you know, across a number of different things that affect your job.
And being t shaped means that you can participate in that decision making process.
We don't have to go to the air quote expert. Right?
You don't have to go to the person that knows all the detail about You know, if I think about the 4 of us, right?
We all know about what good testing practices are. And we know them when we see them. Right?
And if we think about product management, we all know what good product management looks like.
But yet, would any of us say that we are an expert in product management. Maybe a couple of us.
Right? But the others can participate in that process and and collaborate as we go, you know, collaborate as those decisions, come up.
So, you know, the need to make those.
So you can get feedback and you get very people looking at it.
Good point. Now, Mike and I were talking earlier about, sort of what does a silo less or a, you know, efficient organization looks like.
And I think Mike, you mentioned Roger Pensky
Yeah. I had a chance in college to, Roger Pensky had just bought Detroit Diesel, which was down the street from I went to school.
And he came up for the college of business and actually went and had a we had a breakfast with him and got to talk to him and then he he gave us kind of a presentation on on some stuff around business in evolving good business practice and he used Detroit Diesel as as his backdrop.
And he said, you know, we were losing 500000000 dollars when I bought the place.
And in a matter of 2 and a half years, I think 2 and a half to 3 years, they turned it around to to a plus 500000000 and they had been losing money for a long time and it was all cultural.
I mean everything he did there was cultural and he desilowed that place in several ways.
He he and the CHRL actually sat down and did a PowerPoint, 30 minute PowerPoint on what Detroit Diesel does.
And he said he had a a 25 year veteran night shift security manager who came in and said, you know what?
I don't even know really what we built. I kinda know, but not really.
Nobody ever really told me about it.
So first time everybody's ever sat down with me from the company, let alone the owner and CEO and told me what it is that we do.
He he took the management structure, took the walls away for a while and actually put like his desk in the middle of what was going on and then put everybody else around him.
So he was physically breaking down physical barriers in different parts of the building.
And they had gemba walks where they would get close to the work and they would go to where the work happening to people.
So he did all kinds of different things to try to physically and culturally de silo the organization and he was able to turn the company around in a pretty quick period of time.
What's a gemma walk, Mike?
So again, the walk is something that is kind of it's that concept of of going to where the work is, right, of of going and seeing where things happen.
We talked a little earlier in this presentation around the concept of, of of moving moving the decisions towards the work, moving the decision to where the work is.
Well, this is about moving the people to where the work is the the leaders, the the different different members of the organization.
Instead of having people come you know, from the plant floor up to you and your ivory tower and talk to you about what's going on.
You go down to where the work happens. You go down to what they're dealing with.
And you actually get involved in the actions and activities of your organization where they're happening.
It's about going and meeting people where they're at and seeing those things happen in real time and understanding, getting a better understanding of what's really going on so that you can appreciate the strengths and the opportunities that you have to to to make improvements.
So, I would caution 1 thing if you ever tried a gumball work it's not as easy as it sounds.
It's not about just getting it from your street, seat, and going and walking the floor.
There is an education that needs to happen in both directions. Yes. Right.
Normally, there there is this, there is this fear, with the with the, let's say common people.
In a in a company, the team members, the the associates, if you want to say that good, that you oh, I don't know how to talk to leadership.
And I don't understand what, what the leadership talks about most of the time.
And and there is that strategic versus tactical gap in what the leadership talks about.
And what the what the team members talk about.
So there is an education in both both sides for the leadership to understand that what the team talks about is not going to be all strategic or high level or big picture.
So they have some learning to go through to understand what happens to the team level and talk to the team at that level.
And for the team members to understand, what is the most important thing to talk about rather and say everything that's going on around.
John, I think it's a really important thing to remember in all of these different tactical types of things you can learn how to do or even some of the outcomes you're trying to achieve.
There's a learning process to go through this. Yeah. We talk about this with empowered teams.
It used to be that with open space when it was first created. He would just create it.
They thought it was about the physical space. They just create this open space and everybody was miserable.
They hated it because nobody went back and looked at why the space mattered, why it worked better, what it did, and nobody ever sat down and really understood what was going on in the dynamics of humans in that space.
They thought it was all about space.
So any of these things that you're thinking about t shaped people and creating moving the decision making towards the work and power teams They all take some learning from all of the participants involved, all the way around.
Everybody's involved that. To understand why is this important? How does it benefit us?
What are the challenges we could run into or the risks if we don't do this right?
And and what is a good way to approach learning it and then implementing it iteratively so we can all feel to Chris's point, psychologically safe in making this transition.
Does that caption capture sort of what you you too have been talking about, doers and deciders.
I mean,
you know, because, you know, leaders can be doers too. Right? And and leaders can be deciders.
And, you know, employees can be leaders and and, and in their own right, and they may be doing things, but they may also be deciding things.
And so I the way I see it is sort of investing and learning for what decisions can I make can I make as a as an impo as a doer, and what decisions do I need to get someone else to help me make?
You know, if I'm not the decider for that decision. I'm just doing the work.
So getting closer with the deciders, you know, the leaders, if you will.
So so this topic, like most of our topics is really deep.
It's got a lot of a lot of things you can look into and we're we're about 16 and a half minutes through.
So, we're we're we're probably reaching the end of our time here. However, there's a lot to, to look into.
I know the title of this short was, was getting rid of the ditch silos, right?
But it's really about ditching what the silos do, in a lot of organizations.
It's about getting rid of the the waste that can be in silos and leveraging what silos do benefit you for in terms of being able to organize and structure large areas or scaled areas of work.
So Any other last comments, from any of our partners here?
I do. Couple of tactical things. 1 as it turns out, it's a shameless plug.
You know, in terms of investing and learning doers and deciders, 1 thing you can do is use management 3 point o's delegation poker, as a way of being able to establish who's making what decisions and what time frame, right, what scope?
And then the other thing I would say that we haven't talked about, we did talk about trust We haven't talked about the fact that transparency is critical.
Right? I've got a customer right now that I'm working with where decisions don't show up.
People don't know decisions are being made. They just get made. Right?
And then somebody says, well, I didn't know that was going on and it causes an uproar.
And 1 of the things that we've been doing is we've been treating risk and issues much like, or including decisions like you treat risk and issues use.
Right? What are the decisions coming up? When is the latest time we can make it?
And who is the person or who needs to be engaged to make that decision? Right?
And by being transparent and saying that and just getting it out.
Even if it's something that only impacts the team, you know, you don't know that.
You don't know that it only impacts your team.
You think so, but there are a lot of decisions that get made where somebody says, well, I didn't know that decision was gonna be made.
Right? Or I didn't understand what that was.
If we're just open about decisions and being transparent about it, I think that that adds a lot to it.
Right? We're not trying to take away anybody power of making a decision.
We just wanna know what the decisions are and how they get made.
Yeah. That's that's really great. And that idea of visibility to to help that reduce uncertainty is huge. Right?
That that's taking a lot out of what silos do generate inherently and scale organizations.
So, once again, thank you everybody for joining us. We're excited to see you here.
There'll be more topics on both knowledge debt and on some of the silo type activities that you'll see coming down the future.
Excuse me. And we look forward to seeing you on our next out. Sure.
Thanks, everyone. Thank you.
