How to Lead Across a Siloed Organization
Cross-Functional Management
Jeff Rosenthal and Molly Rosen
9 min read
It’s long been recognized that cross-functional collaboration is essential. Still, stubborn silos that bog down execution, hamper innovation, and slow decision-making are still a common and persistent challenge.
In their work with company leaders, the authors have found that, without leaders working together at the top, silos and dysfunction are inevitable. The onus is therefore on senior lead`ers to knock down these silos — moving beyond their ability to lead their own teams to also prioritize leading across the organization. The authors discuss what sets successful cross-functional leaders apart.
Recently, the new CEO of a global consumer entertainment company decided that integrating the company’s distinct brands into one digital platform was a key strategy for future growth. He asked the dozen executives leading each brand to create a plan together for how to make it a reality. The team met several times. The CEO was looking forward to hearing their recommendations in a meeting he’d set up to get started. However, he was in for a rude awakening.
The team kicked off the meeting by saying: “We’re sorry, but we’ve spent extensive time on this and we’re stuck. We haven’t figured out how to work together to make this happen.” The CEO was stunned, and thus began a months-long process of building the leaders’ ability to lead across the business.
Sadly, this is not an isolated example. In a recent CEO research study we conducted, we interviewed a dozen CEOs of mid – to large-size companies. There was one key challenge every CEO mentioned: their frustration at not being able to get their executive teams to work together. “I’m the only one who thinks about the entire company,” one CEO lamented, “and despite my best efforts, each of my executives is only concerned with their own function
or team.”
Organizational complexity, more work spanning multiple functions, and the need for faster decision-making have made cross-business collaboration table stakes for staying competitive. Massive changes caused by the pandemic, more geographically dispersed teams, less in-person interaction, and a continued lack of enterprise-wide incentives have created even more obstacles to working together across the business.
Given our work with senior leaders and their increasing angst at trying to get things done cross functionally, we set out to better understand how great leaders navigate these challenges to drive results. We interviewed dozens of senior leaders (VP level and above) who were nominated by their organizations as individuals who could get things done across the business without damaging relationships along the way. Through our interviews, we found very clear and distinct patterns for how leaders do this well. Specifically, we found there are particular mindsets, skills, and practices top-performing leaders use to lead cross-enterprise efforts and achieve significant outcomes for the organization.
We also found that leaders feel ill-equipped in how to lead across. Their experience and development is in traditional vertical leadership (i.e., managing their own teams), but not in getting things done with peers who have different agendas, priorities, and motivations. The skillsets are not the same.
Leaders who thrive cross functionally possess what we call “lateral agility,” or the ability to move side to side quickly while maintaining their balance. They spend as much time leading across the organization as they do with their own teams. In organizations, this means effectively partnering with leaders of different departments to further enterprise goals, while maintaining a focus on their own group’s objectives. Here are three traits these high-performing leaders have in common.
High-performing, cross-functional leaders embrace expanded mindsets that lean on humility to activate bigger picture success:
Think enterprise-first:
They think enterprise-first, consistently putting enterprise objectives above functional, team, or personal goals. They are more selfless than their lower-performing colleagues. In cross-functional decisions, they use powerful phrases like: “What do the organization or our customers need from our work together?”
Find expertise everywhere:
They believe their role is to find expertise everywhere. They exhibit the humility to integrate the expertise of others, acknowledging that the greatest path to success is to assemble the right team, rather than trying to do it all themselves. As one leader explained, “My job is to synthesize the wisdom of all these experts in their various roles and weave it all together.” And another leader told us, “Sometimes followership is the greatest act of leadership.”
We now know that lateral agility is a vital capability for today’s senior leader. It’s no longer enough to lead a team well — too much work happens across functions and organizations. The very definition of effective leadership has changed in response to that reality. By becoming more laterally agile, leaders can finally make the promise of cross-functional collaboration real, enabling their organizations to bust silos, speed decision-making, and bring their strategies to life.
A high degree of curiosity and empathy fuel connective skills that allow these leaders to forge trusted and mutually beneficial relationships across the organization:
Build understanding and trust:
They build understanding and trust by proactively seeking to clarify the motivations and constraints of colleagues and stakeholders. One leader we interviewed said, “If you don’t understand what it’s like to be in your colleague’s shoes, you’re not going anywhere.”
Find ways to win together:
They find ways to win together, seeking and creating solutions that leverage next-level negotiation skills to make all stakeholders feel a part of the solution. Several leaders talked of using “paradoxical questions,” such as: “How can you and I find a solution that enables me to achieve what I’m trying to do, while also enabling your team to meet its objectives?” This forces expansive thinking and avoids either-or discussions.
In their day-to-day work, the leaders who are successful at leading across use simple practices that go a long way in building credibility with their peers and bridges across departments:
Leverages the idea of bringing a “sketch” to a conversation:
They “make purple” with their cross-functional colleagues. As one leader told us, “I bring red, you bring blue, and together we create something purple — something different and better than either of us would have created alone.” This leverages the idea of bringing a “sketch” to a conversation: not starting from scratch, but also not forcing a fully developed plan on others who weren’t involved in creating it. One health care executive we talked to said: “I used to push my team to accept my ideas because I wanted to move fast. But I’ve realized over years of experience that the quickest way to get alignment is to involve others up front in crafting the answer. ”Understand what it’s like to be in your colleague’s shoes, you’re not going anywhere.”
Prioritize relationship-building:
They reach across, prioritizing relationship-building with those stakeholders most important to getting work done. Realizing that trust is key to effective problem-solving, leaders with lateral agility understand that this is time well spent.
Some organizations are now recognizing that intentional effort is required to promote cross-enterprise collaboration. They’re beginning to develop lateral agility in their leaders and are re-examining incentives to ensure they promote inter-departmental collaboration rather than cross-departmental conflict. And they’re looking at organizational structures to find ways to minimize silos.
Here are a few strategies to increase your own lateral agility:
Take inventory of how well you’re managing cross-functional relationships. Considering the practices described above, which can yield the most benefit for you? Identify your top five to eight stakeholders, then map them against their strategic importance to you versus the frequency of interaction you have with them. Are you putting enough time and intention into building the cross-enterprise relationships that matter most?
Assess how much time you’re taking to lead across versus leading your own team. Knowing that the most successful leaders are now spending as much time leading across as leading vertically, what implications does that have for how you spend your time day to day?
Be a student of your own organization. Take time with peers outside of your department to understand what their goals are, what challenges they’re facing, and what motivates them. The more you put yourselves in their shoes, the more lateral trust you will build, and the more you’ll understand about your broader company and how it operates.
