Trying to Break Your Organizational Silos? Start Here.

Somewhere along the way, collaboration became its own full-time job. Back-to-back meetings, 47 Slack channels and a growing sense that decisions are happening somewhere. Everyone’s busy, everyone’s “collaborating,” but somehow, things still aren’t moving forward.

That’s the thing about silos: They rarely announce themselves. They slip in quietly as companies grow, teams get bigger and processes get heavier.

In December 2023, for example, Tesla had grown to more than 140,000 employees — nearly triple its size from just five years earlier. That kind of scale creates new complexity, and if culture doesn’t evolve with it, coordination suffers. Just a few months later in April 2024, Tesla recalled nearly 3,900 Cybertrucks due to an unapproved assembly change involving the accelerator pedal.

At first glance, it looked like a simple engineering oversight. But beneath it was a broader cultural signal: Critical decisions were being made in isolation, bypassing checks that would have caught the issue. It wasn’t just a flaw in the system; it was a breakdown in cross-functional communication, a sign that the company’s ways of working hadn’t kept pace with its growth.

We talk about silos like they’re a structural issue, but when communication breaks down and critical decisions bypass the right checks, that’s a cultural problem. Culture acts as the invisible force that either enables strategy to take hold or causes it to unravel. The mindsets, habits and unspoken norms that guide how people work can quietly accelerate progress or derail it.

Even in high-performing organizations, silos can take root. On the surface, teams seem aligned. But underneath, miscommunication, eroded trust and clashing processes expose a culture that hasn’t evolved with the strategy. The result? A facade of productivity where teams are busy but misaligned.

If you want to bridge your organizational silos, here’s how to read the cultural signals and reset the habits holding you back.

Related: Demolish Your Company’s Silos to Unlock Organizational Efficiency – Here’s How.

1. Use moments of change to reassess culture

According to Deloitte, 75% of global organizations operate in a matrix. In these environments, authority is shared and people take their cues from what leaders do, not just what they say. In the moments that matter — how priorities are set, how feedback is delivered, how conflict is handled — what leaders choose to do either reinforces culture or erodes it. This is especially true during moments of change. When teams are navigating a merger, reorg or shift in strategy, there’s a temptation to double down on structure. But the smarter move is a cultural one.

In a recent engagement, my team supported two communications firms merging to form a stronger, unified business. Like many leaders in that situation, they faced a choice: default to one company’s legacy culture, or use the moment to shape something new. They chose the latter.

Rather than preserving old ways of working, they asked: “What culture will best support the strategy we’re building together?” That one question led to real alignment. By co-defining shared norms and addressing siloed habits — such as relying on personal networks for decision-making — they laid the groundwork for a culture that could successfully carry the business forward.

We saw this play out at a global cruise company as well. What began as a leadership development program to support the rollout of new leadership behaviors became a broader cultural reset. Leaders didn’t just learn new skills; they practiced new behaviors: modeling curiosity in meetings, giving feedback that built trust and surfacing tensions without blame. Those moments, repeated over time, became the building blocks of a culture that supported real collaboration, not performative alignment.

You’ve likely seen moments like this in your own organization, when growth or disruption reveals the need for more than a structural fix. These are inflection points. And when you use them to revisit how people work together — not just where — you turn culture into a strategic advantage.

2. Aim for purposeful collaboration, not more meetings

When collaboration stalls, the instinct is often to add more: more meetings, more shared docs, more people in the room. But these fixes often mask the real issue.

Instead of breaking down silos, they create new ones under the surface. Here’s how it happens:

• Everyone is involved, but no one is accountable. Without clear roles or decision rights, people default to their own teams or networks.

• Work becomes fragmented. Different groups contribute in parallel, but without shared context or ownership, efforts duplicate or stall.

• Momentum slows. Meetings feel collaborative, but decisions drag, execution slips and frustration builds between functions.

It looks like cross-functional teamwork, but it functions like a silo.

Deloitte encountered this challenge when launching Pixel, its open innovation platform. Initially met with internal resistance, Pixel didn’t succeed because of new structures. It succeeded because of cultural alignment. Leadership prioritized trust-building, clarified participation roles and aligned incentives to encourage adoption. By engaging early internal champions and focusing on shared outcomes, Deloitte fostered collaboration that was rooted in shared purpose rather than forced process.

This approach highlights a key truth: Collaboration should feel purposeful, not performative. Teams don’t just need more connection. They need clearer alignment on who decides what, how success is measured and when input is truly needed.

Related: Change Is a Team Sport — So Every Player Needs to Own It. Here’s How to Get Everyone Involved.

3. Build trust through intentional routines

In fast-moving, high-pressure environments, rituals often get cut in the name of efficiency. But without them, something more costly slips away: trust.

Siloed work doesn’t always come from a lack of collaboration — it often comes from a lack of connection. When people don’t see or celebrate progress together and when priorities shift without shared context, trust quietly erodes. That’s where intentional routines come in.

At one global entertainment company, urgency was the default. Leaders jumped from one launch to the next, skipping reflection and recognition. While productive on the surface, it left teams feeling unseen and disconnected. By introducing small but consistent rituals, such as cross-functional retrospectives, milestone celebrations and weekly shoutouts for collaborative wins, leaders began to rebuild what was missing: a shared sense of progress, belonging and momentum. These routines didn’t just boost morale. They reset the team’s cultural rhythm.

Trust is built in the rhythms of daily work: who’s recognized, who’s included and how people show up when things get hard. In distributed or hybrid environments, where work naturally splinters, these routines become the glue. They’re how culture is built and how siloes start to come undone.

4. Treat culture as a living system (and your strategy’s strongest ally)

Culture doesn’t shift once — it evolves constantly. And organizations that track those shifts intentionally outperform those that don’t. Microsoft offers a compelling example. Instead of relying solely on engagement surveys, the company measures “thriving,” a nuanced, human-centric signal of where energy is building or slipping. It’s a reminder that staying aligned with your culture isn’t about sweeping overhauls. It’s about small, deliberate adjustments that keep momentum moving in the right direction.

Silos, after all, aren’t merely structural. They’re cultural. They take root when leaders default to outdated habits, when collaboration is performative and when trust is too fragile to support shared ownership. They persist in rooms where everyone has a voice, but no one feels accountable.

Related: A Good Work Culture Doesn’t Come From Free Pizza — 10 Lessons I Learned From Building an Unbreakable Culture

Reinvigorating culture doesn’t mean starting over. It means leading differently. It means recognizing that when collaboration stalls or strategy slips, silos aren’t the root cause but the signal. By resetting how people work together, especially in moments of change, leaders turn culture into a living, strategic advantage. That’s how progress sticks and silos don’t.

The result? Faster decisions. Deeper engagement. A culture that evolves as fast as your business does — and one where silos don’t stand a chance.

Somewhere along the way, collaboration became its own full-time job. Back-to-back meetings, 47 Slack channels and a growing sense that decisions are happening somewhere. Everyone’s busy, everyone’s “collaborating,” but somehow, things still aren’t moving forward.

That’s the thing about silos: They rarely announce themselves. They slip in quietly as companies grow, teams get bigger and processes get heavier.

In December 2023, for example, Tesla had grown to more than 140,000 employees — nearly triple its size from just five years earlier. That kind of scale creates new complexity, and if culture doesn’t evolve with it, coordination suffers. Just a few months later in April 2024, Tesla recalled nearly 3,900 Cybertrucks due to an unapproved assembly change involving the accelerator pedal.