May 13 / Randall Iliff

Beware of Silos that Want You to Fix the Other Silos

The life of a consultant can be “interesting” at times, often as an extension of the challenges that are present on the client side of the interaction. This is a simple and obvious consequence of being engaged in a system of interaction with them. 

It is also a good thing, within reason:

If they didn’t have challenges, you wouldn’t have a value contributing role.
If you commit to helping, it means dealing with the baggage as well.
The “baggage” is often filled with critical insight waiting to be tapped.
Understanding can lead to mutual respect and strong relationships. Normal text.
No doubt you noticed the “within reason” condition in my comment above. Just as clients judge consultants for possible fit, the reverse is also sound practice. Let’s borrow the logic of medical professionals, where terms like Safety, Stabilization, Engagement, Treatment, and Support are commonly applied.
  • Your safety as a care-giver is a real concern, and emotional safety counts just as much as physical safety. Professional boundaries are essential since Tasers and tranquilizer darts are frowned upon in most corporate settings.
  • If your client is in crisis, your job isn’t to “fix” them, it’s to somehow keep them alive until they are ready to work on the underlying issues. Note that you also have to survive this period if you wish to help them on the other side.
  • Much of what we would consider dysfunctional has a functional benefit to them – like an addiction it will be difficult to help until that dependency is acknowledged. Taking away a dysfunctional reward is still seen as a loss that you imposed on them.
  • Treatment isn’t always easy, or pleasant, and requires a structured environment to sustain individuals through meaningful change. There is a reason that two thirds of all gym memberships go essentially unused, and that February 15 has become known as “Quitters Day” in the fitness industry.
  • It is enormously misguided to “fix” individuals and then throw them back into exactly the same system conditions that created the initial issues. In addition to wasting resources, this demoralizes both the patient and care-giver.
Where systems logic come into play is the realization that fixing any part of a system in isolation is a fantasy – we call it a system because some emergent property depends on the interaction of elements. When everyone shares the emergent property, but doesn’t consider themselves part of a single system, a dangerous system of siloed systems arises.

Let’s say a business unit is assigned growth and revenue targets. Within that unit Sales, Engineering, PM, Production and Support each have plans and goals to meet. When leaders in each group are judged solely by performance of their plans and goals, a perverse incentive is created to optimize their performance at the expense of others. Doing more than the dead minimum at interfaces is seen as “subsidizing other groups at our expense” rather than a collective investment in success. Silo leaders get bonuses, but the system-level ROI model remains broken.

The extreme version of this problem is when one silo seeks to engage your help, not to improve the overall organization or correct underlying issues, but instead as a club to more effectively attack other silos so that the illusion of success can be maintained.

Let’s say revenue targets are in danger – not enough units will ship this quarter to meet the expected numbers. Production will be blamed first, since units ship from the loading dock. Production will point out that they built and shipped one of everything that was sold, so they will blame Sales instead. Sales is certain that they would have made the numbers if only Engineering had released the new features on schedule and Support had been more responsive to customer outages. Engineering headcount was cut to save money last quarter. Support is tired of dealing with systems that weren’t designed or installed properly.

All are necessary, none are sufficient, and everything interacts.
That business system is just as much a living thing as you are.
 
In both life and business, any collection of cells that are organized and directed to their own purpose rather than that of the whole are at least dangerous and potentially fatal. They are driven by self-preservation instinct and become adept at exploiting their environment.

Without a system perspective it is impossible to tell the good from the bad, or to recognize when you are being manipulated to fit hidden internal agendas. It is a worthy goal to help others, but make sure you are supporting the entire patient versus enabling greater dysfunction.

Without a system perspective it is impossible to tell the good from the bad, or to recognize when you are being manipulated to fit hidden internal agendas.

It is a worthy goal to help others, but make sure you are supporting the entire patient versus enabling greater dysfunction.

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