Transformation Tips Series: Breaking Down Organizational Silos in CX Led Digital Transformation

Breaking down organizational silos is an important step in achieving a successful customer experience lead digital transformation. Here are a few considerations to keep in mind when planning your organization's transformation journey:

1. Understand the root causes of silos: Before you can begin breaking down silos, you need to understand why they exist and the drivers that lead the organization to generate those silos. Some common reasons for silo generation include a lack of communication, conflicting incentive and performance plans, conflicting goals, and a lack of trust between business units. Identify the root causes of silos to develop a targeted strategy to address them.
2. Establish a shared vision: To break down silos, it's important to establish a shared vision of what success looks like for the organization that can be shared throughout the organization as a Strategic NorthStar. This can help create a sense of purpose and direction for all departments, aligning everyone towards common goals.
3. Create cross-functional teams: Cross-functional teams, especially ones that span the enterprise can help break down silos by bringing together people from different departments to work on common programs. These teams can help foster collaboration, communication, and a shared sense of purpose as they build horizontal capabilities across the organization.
4. Develop a communication strategy: Effective communication is key to breaking down silos and usually best served as a function within a Strategic Transformation and Change Management strategy. Developing a communication strategy that ensures all departments are informed and involved in decision-making processes can go a long way to filling the communication voids within an organization. At a tactical tooling level consider using tools like Slack, Trello, or Asana to facilitate communication and collaboration as part of a planned internal PR, marketing, and messaging strategy.
5. Encourage knowledge sharing: Silos often also form when departments hoard information. Encourage knowledge sharing by creating a culture that values transparency and collaboration above self-interests. Provide opportunities for staff to share their expertise with others and learn from their colleagues and do so in a very public fashion.
6. Focus on customer experience: A customer experience lead digital transformation is centered on the customer or similarly other key stakeholders such as colleagues and partners. Keep the customer at the forefront of your efforts and use their needs and wants to drive decision-making. Using customer experience (CX) decisioning tools directly informed from the customer or stakeholder such as Personas, Journeys, and Service Blueprints can be immensely helpful to this end, often paying dividends for firms that make these tool investments. This can help break down silos by creating a shared focus on customer or stakeholder satisfaction.
7. Monitor progress: Breaking down silos is not a one-time event. It requires ongoing effort and monitoring to ensure that progress is being made and can’t be done without the appropriate instrumentation, measurement, monitoring, and management. Set up metrics to track progress towards your firm’s shared vision, and regularly review and adjust your strategy as needed.

Here at Mesh Digital, LLC we're fortunate to have helped global clients, across sectors define and realize the value of breaking down organizational silos while building E2E Digital Strategies. From performing research, to developing Personas, Journeys, or Service Blueprints, to bootstrapping CX teams, we bring the power of real-world experience to bear on behalf of our clients. To unlock the potential of a modern business for your firm fueled by Digital Strategies and Tech, please feel free to reach out.