Do we know what we know?
How leaders can harness knowledge networks to boost performance by sparking collaboration across teams and regions.
As effective managers, we need to excel at communicating clearly with our colleagues, clients, and stakeholders. In every global company, another core leadership skill is the ability to spark dynamic collaboration across teams, worldwide.
The urgency of ‘breaking the silos’ to boost collaboration across teams and regions has been on leaders’ agendas since the 1980s, as a key to improving corporate performance and agility, and reducing duplication. But today, creating a culture of collaboration remains a challenge. A closer look at how many organizations are operating reveals that corporate silos are alive and well.
There are good reasons for this. Firstly, it’s natural that people identify most with the comfort zone of their own teams rather than colleagues in other groups. And, as workplace change becomes more fast-paced and complex, teams are expected to do more with less, reducing the time they have to deliver on their critical tasks. So, naturally, learning and sharing across corporate communities is seen as a lower priority. The simple truth is that many professionals feel they don’t have the extra time to collaborate.
For the organization, this dynamic creates a missed opportunity and loss of value. Useful lessons from problems solved are not shared. Other teams’ successes and failures are not known, and colleagues’ unique expertise that can spark innovation remains hidden in pockets across the company.
A study published in Harvard Business Review* by Amy C. Edmondson, (Harvard), Sujin Jang, (INSEAD) and Tiziana Casciaro (University of Toronto) sheds light on this dynamic. It finds that in the organizations studied, people are most comfortable in vertical relationships. While companies are most competitive when they exchange know-how and information horizontally – across the organization – as part of their daily work practices.
The researchers suggest four approaches that leaders can use to encourage horizontal sharing and learning:
- Identify ‘cultural brokers’: which colleagues have a knack for connecting across groups?
- Encourage people to be more curious – by asking open, unbiased questions that broaden their perspectives.
- Motivate them to take others’ points of view.
- Create the enthusiasm to link with other networks across the organization.
A common challenge across different industries
Creating a culture of collaboration and inquiry across global teams requires a serious long-term investment in nurturing incremental change. In our experience of advising business leaders – in the healthcare, pharma, manufacturing, and agri-food sectors – we see first-hand the challenges that leaders face; and how strategic communications help organizational change initiatives succeed.
In our work with leaders in these industries we advise how they can overcome internal barriers to sharing knowledge and experience – improving collaboration across teams, departments and regions.
Effective knowledge sharing strategies combine strategic communication tactics with digital transformation, and new ways of capturing and sharing useful know-how across teams. For example: how a government engagement team has informed legislation in Brazil can benefit the regulatory team in India; new approaches to negotiating pharma pricing in one Middle Eastern country can be replicated across the region, and serve as a model for other emerging markets. It’s communication skills that make the links that help local managers learn from their counterparts in other regions.
Building bridges rather than bringing down the silos
Focusing the communications lens on corporate change programs helps teams become good at ‘knowing what they know’ and sharing what they have learned. Strategic communication tactics encourage learning networks to emerge as teams are connected across departments and regional teams.
Delivering change is challenging and complex. But the goal of an effective learning network is simple: a world where every employee is encouraged to share what they know; and where they can rapidly access useful ideas and solutions – at the moment the need it.
Seen from this perspective, a smart solution is to see how we can best create bridges between silos, rather than breaking them with radical restructuring. Making knowledge sharing a reality starts with innovative leadership. The catalyst to make it happen is strategic communication support.
Would you like to explore how learning networks can boost performance in your organization?
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Do you know what you know?
Check out these five steps to unlock knowledge sharing and learning across projects, departments, and global businesses.
*Source: Cross-Silo Leadership: How to create more value by connecting experts from inside and outside the organization. Harvard Business Review (May-June 2019)>
