Bridging Islands Doesn't Make Them A Whole Land
Many managerial challenges are attributed to the vague notion of "functional silos." This notion carries the connotation of disconnected departments, systems, tools, processes, data, etc.
With a careful look, the actual challenge is that organizations need integral insights, decisions, and actions at the speed, time, and cost they want.
So, what qualifies as integral?
I think there are three criteria to be satisfied
Explains the material context for a given business outcome
Exposes the levers & knobs that influence the outcome
Explains the interdependencies & trade-offs
This definition suggests some form of deductive intelligence, such as a mathematical model, simulation, or financial model.
Wrong solutions to the wrong problem
When things are not going as needed, and if it slightly seems like it is due to a disconnect, management isolates the disconnect problem and formulates a way to connect the ends. This generally ends with one of the five generic solutions below.
Matrixed organization: If functions are siloed, let's introduce new functions that connect the functions, such as project managers, product managers, etc., which ultimately grow their own hierarchies.
Data connectors: If a system doesn't see changes in another, let's deploy a service that polls or subscribes to changes in the source system and writes to the destination system, which leads to thousands of connectors, each having its own dependencies, life cycle, and maintenance needs.
Pooling: Let's put all the data together.
Colocating: Let's have these teams sit in the same room. Let's merge this DC and plant under the same roof.
Procuring: Let's buy the "integrated" system we saw on "the" vendor pitch and replace this "old "system. Fun fact: some companies replace extensive systems such as ERP, IBP, and PLM every 5-7 years.
These generic managerial reactions might be connecting the disconnected. But since these generic reactions lack deductive intelligence, they don't produce the much-needed integral insights, decisions, and actions. Moreover, these connections are almost always self-defeating due to the complexity and life cycle costs they introduce.
The good news is that it is possible to easily introduce integral solutions no matter how big, complex, and siloed your enterprise is.
©Saip Eren Yilmaz, 2023
