Enhancing productivity in organization silos without demolishing the silos

Organization silos can negatively affect its performance when communication between departments fails. under such circumstances, organizations should quickly identify the reason for the failed communication rather than curtail a department's activities. A negative silo forms when a unit in an organization refuses to collaborate with other units. [1]

Leaders in an organization can tell silos have formed and are having a negative impact on productivity if knowledge flow and resources sharing in departments slows down or stops, driving an urgent need to either bridge the gaps in the silos or breakdown these silos. When information flow is interfered with, productivity and efficiency is well likely to be negative. [3] 

Two major ways through which silos form: [4]

• When leaders are in competition and seek to prove to be better than the other leaders. In the process, they make it their ambition to keep information as discreet as possible so as to get ahead. This impedes an organization's ability to leverage on synergy driving a lot of effort duplication and further derailing the organization from achieving its objectives
• When leaders have lots of responsibilities on them, they might fall for the trap of setting more rules and regulations for their teams, to maintain control. With time, the teams might be all drawn into such rules that they loose sight of departments outside their boundary walls.  

Silos can be made productive if:

• Leaders commit themselves to collaborative leadership styles by working with other leaders in an organization to achieve the ultimate goal. To get to this level, a leader will need to: [4]
• Build meaningful relationships across silos
• Handle all conflict in a constructive manner
• And share power and control
• Give cross functional responsibilities to members of a silo to boost a culture of offering support to different teams [2]
• Replace the many sign offs required for special requests among teams with clear guidelines for such requests [2]
• Cross functional review meetings should also be encouraged on a regular basis to enhance collaborations among teams [2]

Silos have a positive side to them as they enhance accountability. They should therefore not be dismantled but steered towards the overall organisation goals by putting into consideration the above factors.

References

1. Bento, F., Tagliabue, M. and Lorenzo, F., (2020). Organizational Silos: A Scoping Review Informed by a Behavioral Perspective on Systems and Networks. Societies, 10(3), p.56.
2. Majchrzak, A. and Wang, Q., (1996). Breaking the functional mind-set in process organizations. Harvard Business Review, September-October.
3. Serrat, O., (2017). Bridging organizational silos. In Knowledge Solutions (pp. 711-716). Springer, Singapore.
4. Talsma, T.H., (2016). Eliminating silos in regionally distributed organizations to encourage knowledge sharing.

Apple success, Lessons for every business

After listening in on the C.E.O. of Apple INC., Tim Cook, and the C.F.O. Luca Maestri conference call held on July 30th 2020, I picked some critical factors that have contributed towards their successful results as a company in their Q3 Fiscal year.

• Investment in their people at work
• Investment in the community
• Engagement levels with their customers
• Opening up to more investors

The company is committed and has renewed this commitment towards creating a diverse and inclusive team. There is a lot of team care and the company is highly invested in providing its team with an environment that greatly supports innovation

The company is heavily invested in it's community with two major investments:

• Racial Equity and Justice initiative where they are investing 100m USD with a special focus on the people of colour. The company is keen on breaking the barriers of social injustices that exist in the community by stepping in and raising the bar in their ecosystem.
• Affordable housing investment fund that is 400m USD which aims to address housing affordability and availability crisis

The company is heavily invested in their customer engagement with 227 Virtual labs, and new daily audio briefings among other elevated engagement investments

After announcing their financial results, the company also announced a stock split of 4 stocks for every stock (4 for 1 stock split) that the board had approved, with the focus of making their shares accessible to more stakeholders. 

Reference

https://www.apple.com/investor/earnings-call/

Apple records 11% revenue growth Q3 2020 compared to the Q3 2019 (Fiscal yr)

What makes Apple standout in the midst of a global pandemic?

How does the organization face the global pandemic and successfully thrive when the economy everywhere is slowing down?

Lessons from Apple INC.

The market strategy

• How you view your products and services: Apple views its product and services as essential to clients especially in this pandemic. The company views its products and services as essential and therefore seeks to ensure their customers are not short of their products and services.  Apple INC. has established itself as an essential brand offering essential services

• How you deliver on your marketing strategy: 
• With a strong brand, consider outsourcing the retail front to experts with a network in line with your strategy without diluting your brand
• Get experts to deliver on high quality products that will complement your brand
• Markets are governed by rules and regulations and a company can easily infringe on these market regulations. Put in place a team of experts to ensure compliance and quickly manage any litigation that could dent your brand image. Don't ignore this no matter the size of your organization
• Protect your customers privacy. 
• Ensure you remain attractive to investors. Your market strategy will pool necessary resources for future investment and growth

References

Apple INC. (2020), "Apple Reports Third Quarter Results" Available at: https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/07/apple-reports-third-quarter-results/#:~:text=Cupertino%2C%20California%20%E2%80%94%20July%2030%2C,of%20%242.58%2C%20up%2018%20percent.