Silo-Busters!
In a previous entry, fellow author/blogger Jamie Notter discusses how to break up the silo mentality in associations. I want to explore why you need to do it now.
My prediction is that technology innovations are going to eventually drive the implosion of silos within our organizations. Should it be the catalyst? No, but it probably will be. Recently I sat in two different conferences where association executives were the primary audience. One was for association publication editorial staff, the other for association educators. The same key technology themes resonated with both groups, but when asked, neither group has been talking to the other. Social media tools (blogs, wikis, podcasts, etc.) are the “hot new thing” for education departments, communications/PR departments, government relations, IT/web, etc. Each of these groups are looking at these tools, and in many cases acquiring them without any thought to coordinating those acquisition efforts. Soon these different departments are going to realize that they have created a nightmare integration project for IT when suddenly they all want their tools integrated with the database and/or website.
The kicker is that it’s not a cost-savings issue because most of these technologies are not that expensive. Rather it is a huge integration issue. When each silo determines that they need to have their “tools” tracked in a database it becomes a huge resource issue for IT/web folks.
Companies got into this same mess (but on a bigger scale) with learning management systems. Many of these organizations realized that company-wide they were running two or three different systems – each acquired by different divisions of the company. It wasn’t until the divisions that purchased these systems wanted them integrated them into the company’s primary database that anyone realized there was a problem.
Take Jamie’s advice – get senior management talking – create a culture of collaboration. Do it soon. You will be hard pressed to find a dynamic, growing organization working in a silo environment. Why are you?
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