Can we all agree the ’80’s created some great music? I still remember walking down the street with a huge boom box on my shoulder. I even had the dual cassette tape set-up so we could record our own mix tapes.
Ah, life was good!
The ’80’s were also the time when many supervisors had an air-conditioned oasis in the middle of a sweltering manufacturing plant floor. Office workers were trapped in high walled cubicles often isolated from their co-workers. Often these co-workers were sitting just feet away, yet felt like they were in another room. Departments were separated sometimes by physical locations, but definitely by areas. As you can imagine, a set up like this was not conducive to good informational flow and process sharing.
While we are past the ’80’s, unfortunately, many organizations are still stuck in the old “silo mindset” of the ’80’s. Some are physically stuck; company structure has been designed as actual silos, while others have a silo mentality designed into the culture.
Workplace silos are “a part of a company, organization, or system that does not communicate with, understand, or work well with other parts” (Cambridge Dictionary).
While some organizations are stuck, other companies have come a long way from the traditional silo mindset. By challenging the old “silo” thinking, these other companies ushered in a new way to look at how we conduct business. The walls came down. The air conditioners were turned off. Supervisors and planners were moved to the plant floor. Office workers shared more common place areas with shorter walls. Power outlets were strategically placed so everyone could move around freely and collaborate more easily with one another.
Did this help? Did this improve collaboration? Removing these barriers did inherently increase communication, but did it make us any more productive?
Even when we remove these walls, and begin to break down the silos that surround us, we need to be deliberate in in the information we share. Like an old ’80’s mix tape, the variety of information we get bombarded with every day can be overwhelming. We need to sort through this information with deliberate intention. Yet, as W. Edwards Deming said, despite best intentions, “A bad system will beat a good person every time.
We need to step back and begin to make decisions by looking at the big picture. We need to determine the beginning and the end of a process, and examine everything in between. This ‘everything in between’ is the value stream; the entire collection of activities and processes necessary to produce and deliver a product or service. We need to eliminate the silo mindset. Let’s make sure we think about the processes upstream and downstream in the value stream as a whole.
Forming the material before welding, welding before painting, painting before assembly. Gathering information before entering in the system, using information that someone entered into the system. These processes are intrinsically important to one another. We must keep all of these steps in mind and share information accordingly to everyone involved at every step. Share information relevant to the process. Don’t muddy the waters sharing irrelevant information.
Based on all the information shared in this newsletter, here is the most important question I have for you today: Most people would agree that Kenny G and Michael Jackson are both great musical artists. But do they really belong on the same mix tape?
