Any company that has grown bigger than about twenty or so employees has developed functional silos as a necessity. The bigger the company, the more focussed and powerful drivers of behaviour of functional employees those functional silos become.
At some point, they risk becoming self-preserving organisms, which seek survival and growth in an internal environment that competes for scarce resources to be allocated.
This is always a huge problem when seeking to generate change.
Water runs downhill, it finds the easiest way down, it builds momentum, continuously making minor adjustments, carving out a modified route as necessary.
Individuals in an organisation have a choice. Metaphorically, they can just ‘go with the flow’, or they can create friction and try and redirect the water. Few attempt to redirect the flow, and fewer still have the power to mandate it.
At some point, someone comes in and says we want some water back at the top of the hill, so someone gets some buckets, fills them, and starts back up the hill.
Almost always the journey is too tough, and they give up.
The momentum of the water still flowing down the known tracks beats them.
The task of leadership is to make that journey easier, to enable the individual to redirect their piece of the water flow, not to where it is easiest, which is the way it went last time, but to a new way, forging minor changes that cumulatively create the new best route to the end point.
Customers do not care about your internal structures, rules, and priorities. They want their product as ordered, at the agreed price, on time, no defects. This is inherently cross functional.
We have organised businesses for our own convenience, when in fact they should be organised for the convenience of customers.
Header photo credit: Lunayuna via flikr.
