Breaking Down Silos with Collaboration

If you’ve had the pleasure of using the Action Card app, you can immediately tell that collaboration and transparency are at the heart of our reconceptualization of the field visit process. Today we’ll focus on collaboration -how to achieve it and what it can do to revitalize and bring together segmented teams and departments.

Sharing the Company Vision and Goals

When you work in a silo, your team’s goals and objectives are their own, failing to take into account that every other silo in your organization has their own, and they just might conflict. While micro goals are fantastic, if there is no common understanding of big picture goals, the end result can end up disjointed, with the lines not exactly matching up. When functions are highly siloed, it creates several, disjointed layers of command, making it nearly impossible for those functions to come together when they need to. Decisions are delayed or worse, never executed, and the obvious -performance suffers. Consistently communicating the big picture goals is a first and easy step toward breaking down silos.

When we give micro bits of information, we get micro bits of change, motivation and collaboration. Instead, bring in the big picture goals wherever applicable. Be sure that each person knows how they’re contributing to those goals and how everyone else’s efforts contribute to those goals. When silos are built, they represent the idea that a worker has very defined accountability, encouraging them to never expand beyond their silo or contribute the discretionary effort that is so vital to professional growth.

Facilitate with Tools and Processes

Before rolling out this grand idea of collaboration, take a step back and consider what that looks like and how you expect it to be achieved. This can look different for every organization and every process, but in our case we built collaboration into the field visit process with the Action Card app. Instead of information going up and down the ladder, the information collected from field visits can be accessed by every person who touches this process. Reviews become actionable, bringing location staff into the process. This establishes a more transparent, accountable review process and better results through education.

Recognize, and Incentivize

Give them a reason to reach across “party lines” by recognizing inter-silo communication and collaboration. Did a review shine because back of house and front of house communicated really well about guest needs? Be sure that is recognized in a timely fashion. Positive reinforcement only works if it is in real time, and the recognition matches the action.

Collaboration isn’t just a team thing, it’s a customer thing, it’s a bottom line thing. By sharing big picture goals consistently, facilitating the change and then backing it up with positive reinforcement, you’re investing in the future and success of the entire organization. Want to learn about all of this can be part of your field visit process? We’d love to talk about it. Take a quick demo and contact us for more..