Our complex world is changing fast and the prevailing style of management that creates silos cannot react quickly enough. What is a realistic and operational alternative to scale your business organically? First, why do we have hierarchies? Silos are a natural offspring of traditionally hierarchical companies divided into functions and departments. Why do hierarchies exist […]
Shaping Organizations for the Digital Age
We were invited by E-3 Magazine International, an independent SAP Trends and analyses magazine, to write a series on Digital Transformation. Here is the first of those articles written by our Founder, Dr. Domenico Lepore. Unrelenting and unlimited: two words that spring to mind about the Digital Age. The advance of Digital Transformation is unrelenting […]
Always Be Adding Value in the Digital Age
The unstoppable advance of Digital Transformation is leaving household names in its wake while creating unlimited opportunities for others. Why is it becoming so hard to survive for many established players? Much of it has to do with the speed of the changes taking place and failure to shift to the mindset required for a new […]
Silos – Overcoming the Enemy of Digital Transformation
If organizations need to learn anything today it’s how to overcome silos. Silos are the number one enemy of productivity and competitiveness, especially in digital transformation. They also seriously threaten the quality of life of employees. An article by former Navy Seal Chris Fussell ‘The battlefield experience that made me realize the danger of silos and isolated […]
The Damage from Silos in Your Organization: A Systems View
Most organizations are hierarchical. This way of managing means that responsibility gets divided up into functions and the ‘head’ of each function is responsible for the results of that function and the budget allocated. Isn’t this rational? After all, the notion of hierarchy is as old as the bible. Literally. Moses was introduced to it […]
The Silo Peril and Breaking Down Barriers
“For those languishing at the bottom of a silo, there may be no way out.” This was the chilling conclusion of The Economist’s review of the book ‘The Silo Effect: The Peril of Expertise and the Promise of Breaking Down Barriers’ by Gillian Tett. There is little doubt in our minds that silos and silo mentality are among the […]
Freedom from the Trap of Silos through a Network of Projects
Many organizations still have traditional hierarchies and silo their people into functions. But the complexity of today’s reality needs something different. With the exponential growth of interconnections and interdependencies, a traditional organizational design can undermine productivity and sustainable growth. Here we summarize the organizational design we propose, based on two decades of international work, specifically applied to […]
How a CIO Can Learn to Drive Real Business Results
Ideally, the role of the CIO should be to manage the Quality of how humans and technology interact to produce real business results. In reality, CIOs today find themselves constrained in what they can achieve operationally. On the one hand, they need to be able to improve business performance. This leads them to want to […]
The End of Silos – Building Organizations Fit for Our Times
If organizations need to learn anything today it’s how to overcome silos. Silos are the number one enemy of productivity and competitiveness. They also seriously threaten the quality of life of employees. A recent article by former Navy Seal Chris Fussell ‘The battlefield experience that made me realize the danger of silos and isolated teams’ is a […]
Science against Silos – Why Organizations Need to Be Systems
The world of management is changing fast, and yet we still live in an environment where the prevailing organizational design is “functional/hierarchical” and organizations are thought of as a collection of silos. At the same time, we know that we are experiencing increasing levels of complexity. Why is it so hard to manage these increased […]