I have often found some functions just want to compete with each other "sales vs marketing", "Digital IT vs enterprise IT", "E-commerce vs digital marketing".
I've learnt that as a leader you often can't just ask, or even tell, the functional leaders to get on together, work together, support each other.
We, humans, just find that competitive urge is too great and so the fractious, time wasting, un-constructive functional infighting continues.
My solution has been to "SLICE THROUGH THE SILOS" and here are three ways to do it:
1. Sit competing functional teams on the same table - yup make one long work desk and mix up the functions on it. We placed The Body Shop Product Marketing and Product Development teams on the same tables and wow did they collaborate.
2. Merge the functions - yup sounds quite draconian but really Digital IT and Enterprise IT can report into one Digital IT director. They've done this now at Pandora.
3. Set unreasonable time lines - yup we've set such short time lines to deliver a project that the only way for the business and teams to succeed has been to work together.
Give it a try and slice through the silos
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