When information is scattered and siloed, it can make it harder to actually get things done. Prioritizing creative, collaborative solutions and setting the tone from the top down can help.
As the digital, cloud-based landscape becomes more diverse, cluttered and chaotic, it becomes harder and harder for people to actually benefit from technologies. Across organizations, information can be rather unhelpfully siloed into specific teams, resulting in duplication, wasted time searching, ill-informed decision-making and even competition or pettiness between teams.
Particularly when disruptions to our usual way of doing things force us to find new solutions and traditional lines of communication are disrupted (as seen during the COVID-19 pandemic), it takes more energy to accomplish the same things, and it’s easy to get bogged down, demoralized and disorganized in the clutter.
In a UNSW article called How Has COVID Changed the Way We Should Collaborate and Innovate?, Professor Frederik Anseel reviewed the analysis of communications of Microsoft employees in America during COVID-19 and concluded that, “The flow of information between groups is drying up, which is a problem for innovation. … The network no longer renews itself, which causes a decrease in knowledge creation and decreases the quality of work results.”
Competing (and sometimes incompatible) digital ecosystems and differing preferences for tools or processes across organizations only add to the problem. Individuals and teams don’t always agree on which tools are best when it comes to when, where and how they store, create and share information, and traditionally, those competing platforms haven’t been good at communicating with one another. The result is an abundance of information and data that’s scattered all over the place.
The rise in asynchronous communication can also impact the ability to understand intent and ensure consistent interpretations. Although it’s true that, sometimes, silos can help us avoid confusion (especially with complex and sophisticated information that only specialists can decipher), the real problem arises when there aren’t adequate paths between silos and when essential insights and messages aren’t properly shared — or understood.
The ability to communicate in so many ways is one of the things that makes humans unique, but when people aren’t speaking the same language (either literally or metaphorically), it can make it harder for everyone to get on the same page. It can take a lot of mental processing power to reinvent the wheel or determine the “right” decision without adequate context, and those demands only increase the cognitive load that individuals carry. The heavier the cognitive load, the harder it can feel to accomplish even the simplest of tasks.
Decision-making shouldn’t feel like a guessing game. If someone who needs to be “in the know” doesn’t know about or understand all of the essential details, it’s not surprising that they’ll feel frustrated and make mistakes. Limited transparency — whether intentional or not — can be demoralizing and ultimately affects productivity and engagement levels. Having access to historical insights and the ability to easily share information across teams and geographies can help.
To cope with modern-day demands, people need a single, simple place where they can bring together all of their files, emails, links, photos, notes and lists — even ones that live in cloud accounts from “competing” companies — to work together and get things done without anyone feeling in the dark. It’s about more than just content; it’s about context. And that’s where Correlate comes in.
Correlate is one app that securely connects people’s files from different cloud accounts*, allowing them to find, share, collaborate and communicate without wasting their time or energy. But efforts need to go beyond simply providing another tool in the knowledge worker’s arsenal. Leaders must create a culture that values information sharing — and leading by example is often one of the best ways to do that. Whether it’s through a RACI matrix (which establishes the four roles that stakeholders play in any project), robust intranets and sharing structures (or Correlate boards!), or something as simple as establishing an “open door” policy that encourages employees to set aside regular time for connection and collaboration, there are lots of steps we can take to prioritize creative, collaborative solutions and set the tone from the top down.
The post Break the silo: When information is siloed, collaboration suffers appeared first on Correlate.com.