Overcoming cross-departmental friction

Jennifer Scheib

How are you breaking down silos & cross-departmental friction at your organization? I love the idea of shared goals and cross-departmental collaboration. What are some examples that you're seeing or implementing? I'd love to hear!

Grant Jones

I don't think you can ever get rid of cross-departmental friction however fostering a company culture that emphasizes transparency and collaboration can certainly help. At Planhat we have company-wide townhall meetings every quarter with each department presenting and open Q&A after. In the gaps between those townhall meetings we continue the dialogue on Slack and also post resources to Notion. It probably helps that we are not a super large company (yet) and we're hyper-CS focused. Everyone in the business knows what the bottom line goal of the business is - sustainable growth. We also look at NRR as the north star metric...not just the CS team but everyone in the company feels invested in that metric. For example, Sales would normally want to sell just about any prospect, right? But at PH we are very aware of ICP and bringing in the right customers, and how bringing in the wrong customers can impact CS and NRR down the road. Both Sales and CS also impact the Product team...who has their own thoughts an opinions but maybe lack what's being talked about in the market, so it's a partnership to decide what makes sense to build next. Just a few examples that come to mind..

Jennifer Scheib

@Grant Jones Thanks for sharing! A little friction keeps things interesting, I suppose. 🙂 Couldn't agree more on emphasizing transparency and collaboration. Bravo to Planhat for fostering this culture!

Jeffrey Kushmerek

You need friction and transparency. You need to challenge each other in order to make things better and more worthwhile. The companies that I worked at that were all unicorns and rainbows were the failures. The ones where we challenged each other all had good exits

Brian O'Keeffe

https://gaingrowretain.com/discussion/comment/11650#Comment_11650

It has been an issue at every single company I have worked at. Barriers get broken down over time and the key is getting to know the other teams and having the C team aligned with your goals. When a top executive told me he did "not believe in communities" as we were about to launch I knew we were in trouble. (He changed roles, saving our program.) 

Hardened habits and routines can be very hard to break down. In some of my experiences, it was very hard and some too many people were not going to change. I focused on everyone who was a supporter, bringing every new team member on board with a personal welcome and outreach, and slowly limited the impact of the never community/CS ers.  

Jennifer Scheib

@Jeffrey Kushmerek Completely agree, embrace the challenge & see it for the opportunity it brings!

@Grant Jones Same here, the bigger the organization, the harder it is to sustain the effort. The importance of focus can't be emphasized enough!

Steve Bernstein

We're all over "ARTful Insights" as the way to rally and align cross-functionally around the optimal areas of improvement:

• Actionable: is this based on true root cause, or symptoms? Where is the gap -- whether positive or negative -- many times it might be is more optimal to focus on the "bright spots" than the "hot spots."
• Representative: Is the data coverage driving this "insight" actually based on a representative amount of revenue? How many customers are impacted isn't sufficient as many companies have some sort of 80/20 rule where 1 very large and unhappy client can upset NRR from many smaller ones. We like to start by tying ICP revenue to it and go from there.
• Trustworthy: Is this coming directly from customers, or is it being passed through some internal "filter?" Is it anecdotal, or based on actual data?

With that as the framework, we have processes that drive ARTful insights along with regular collaborative meetings that (1) review where we are on the previous month/quarter insights, and (2) what new items are coming up. From there, the cross-functional "champions" team designs the specific "next steps" and the team holds one another accountable.

Hope this helps...? I'm always happy to share more!

/Steve

Cheryl Luft

This is definitely a tough one, as there will always be some form of silo, but it's important to communicate clear roles/responsibilities, plus sharing project work. This type of visibility helps in everyone understanding who needs to be contacted regarding specific situations. Personally, I loop in the broader Operations team on larger announcements for what I'm working on.

Regular meetings with those outside your department, even if it's only for independent updates, are helpful in breaking these down. This can provide a better understanding of overall business goals, create awareness on where a team might be impacted when you may not have realized, and encourage the general cross-functional partnerships. Essentially, if you don't know what a department does, then it's difficult to understand how a change might impact them.

Sometimes it comes down to individuals championing that type of communication and thought process, without going too much in the weeds of every single decision. This is largely dependent on creating a culture of open communication.

Brian O'Keeffe

Bingo: Sometimes it comes down to individuals championing that type of communication and thought process, without going too much in the weeds of every single decision. This is largely dependent on creating a culture of open communication.

Ed Powers

Most of my consulting work is related to breaking down organizational silos. We humans create them naturally because we're poorly adapted to deal with large, complex organizations. As a result, we subconsciously revert to our tribal nature, organizing and cooperating in groups of 15-20 and competing with other groups for limited resources. This primal behavior causes the friction we see in everyday business.

I've been fortunate to work with some very progressive organizations who've understood this part of our human experience. We've worked on several steps to minimize the chronic effects of silo-ism. They include:

Leaders continually amplifying focus on external customers and competitors while promoting an internal culture of "all one team";

Abandoning 1950's-style management practices such as Management by Objectives (MBO) or the latest iteration, OKRs, and instead using enterprise-wide planning, deployment, learning and progress review approaches like hoshin kanri;

Designing, implementing and managing enterprise-wide, cross-functional, "cradle-to-grave," key business processes (e.g., New Product Introduction and Customer Experience). C-level executives each own one, including their associated metrics in their dashboards, goals, metrics, and incentives;

Aggressive, ongoing practice of continuous improvement (e.g., Lean Six Sigma), engaging cross-functional teams to plan and execute them, and reinvesting 5% of total labor capacity explicitly for this purpose;

Physically co-locating cross-functional team members during the time they're working on new product launches or major initiatives to boost daily collaboration; and

Implementing staff rotation programs to give prospective, high-potential leaders cross-functional assignments to broaden their knowledge and skills outside their function

Bottom line is that Customer Success often deals with the disconnects, but the problems can be solved from the C-level down. Often a CCO is this one to lead the charge for the CEO and the board.

Ed

PiperWilson

I have a couple of thoughts.

• Two "scientific" facts:
  • Humans like to label and categorize people.
  • Humans tend to suck at labeling and categorizing people.
• The best way to overcome silos is to find out what the other person's problem is and to offer them a solution with your tool. That way, you are taking some load off them, not asking for something from them.