How comms can spot a silo before it becomes a problem

No one is complaining yet, nothing has escalated and nobody has walked out of a meeting in a huff. But one department just referred to another one as “those guys” instead of “we.” According to Lizz Summers, director of communications and public information officer for the City of Cincinnati Health Department, that’s a major tell that a silo is in place. She told Ragan that when she’s tasked with breaking down silos , the first thing she does is listen to how teams refer to one another.

“When you hear people talking in terms of ‘they’ and ‘them’ about work instead of a universal ‘us’ and ‘we,’ that’s a big red flag from the start,” Summers said. “You can tell someone’s ownership and their pride in it by whether they use ‘we’ and ‘us,’ and the connection they feel. But if you hear ‘they,’ ‘them,’ ‘those guys,’ that’s something you should dig a little deeper on.”

Many communicators would treat word choice like this as a cultural issue. Summers said that the vocabulary that employees use to refer to one another when they’re siloed actively builds the silo as time goes on.

“Us versus them is linguistically a chasm, so automatically you start to hear sides,” she said. “Not only is it a reflection of potentially how someone thinks, it can almost reinforce what’s going on at the same time.”

Go talk to people

When she wants to break down a silo internally with communication, Summers’ first move is setting up conversations to find common ground and understanding. She recommends a few steps to get the ball rolling to break down internal silos:

• Ask leadership who you should talk to. They’ll usually tell you to talk to the strongest performers. But you also need to ask who will be straight with you, and leaders usually know.
• Tell people why you’re there. You’ve seen that departments are running individually, and you want to know what that’s been like from where they sit.
• Write up the themes. Be sure to leave the exact words people used in your report to leaders, as they’ll carry the weight of personal experience.

“Ask a lot of questions, but pledge anonymity,” Summers said. “People need to know they’re not going to be hung out to dry, because that’s the biggest fear, especially in this modern age. They need to know their job is safe, but they also need to know they can express it.”

Get leadership on board

Summers has a theory about where silos originate.

“This may be an unpopular opinion, especially among leaders, but I think siloing starts at the top. When leadership isn’t aligned and doesn’t have that mutual respect, that’s the first crack,” she said. “You can’t challenge everyone to start rowing in the same direction because there’s no direction that everyone’s trying to row to.”

Summers said that she sits with each leader separately to ask what their team’s goals are and how other teams feed into them. Do the same thing with leaders on the other teams. Whatever doesn’t match up should go into a written brief for all leaders that uses each leader’s own words. That way they can see the differences in how they view one another’s functions and where they can shore up support.

She added that communicators should also get leaders to agree on what to do when siloing begins to build up that works for all parties and how to talk through it.

“Fundamentally, this is an exercise in strategic and reputational communications,” Summers said. “It’s getting the lay of the land, understanding where the issues are, where the friction points are and creating messaging and experiences and opportunities around that to create the cohesion.”

[WATCH: Lizz Summers on her advice for communicators walking into siloed organizations]

Remember that breaking silos takes time and intent

Once leaders are aligned, a communicator’s instinct is to launch a messaging push. That could be a get-to-know-you series for employees in other departments or videos following colleagues’ jobs. While none of these are inherently a bad thing, Summers said that’s where most of these efforts stall out.

Instead, start with what each team gets out of the two working better together. It’s never the same for both, so you need both answers before you write anything. The messaging that results should then keep pointing at the moments that prove it. That could be a handoff that went smoothly or a project that came to fruition because of collaboration. Those are silo-breakers and culture builders.

“It’s a long-haul campaign, not a slogan,” Summers said. “We love to slap a slogan on to say what we mean and what we want to achieve, but how are you backing it up? It’s multi-layered, for the long haul, reinforcing everything — you have to be consistent. It’s not one and done.”

For more insights on how to run a silo diagnostic check for communicators, join Ragan’s Communications Leadership Council.

Sean Devlin is the senior internal communications editor at Ragan. You can connect with him on LinkedIn here.