Sometimes, it’s obvious your company struggles with silos. You join the team as a new hire, and the signs are abundantly clear to your fresh eyes. But sometimes, silos creep up on you, growing so slowly over time that no one on your team realizes they’re there until it’s too late.
In the case of the latter, let this article be your guide. Below, you’ll learn three glaring warning signs of corporate silos.
Warning Sign #1: Tech Miscommunication
The average IR team relies on a large suite of technology — from CRM IR tools and IR site data to webcasting software and more.
In many cases, each of these applications is sequestered from one another. And why wouldn’t they be? Purchased from separate SaaS providers, they can’t possibly speak to each other. They were never built with that function in mind.
Unfortunately, that’s how you construct a tech silo. As you add tech to your collection, you further strengthen your technology silo until, eventually, you may struggle to do many of your daily tasks.
When apps don’t interact with each other, challenges enter the equation. You may waste your time hunting down information, clicking from one app to the next. You can accidentally transcribe data incorrectly or duplicate information already notated in another app.
With your time and patience on the line, it’s time to look at how you can update your IR suite to tear down silos. Expert investor relations consultants at Q4 recommend adopting tech that aggregates IR intelligence collected from your entire platform. That’s why the Q4 Capital Connect synthesizes the data from several popular IR apps in a single end-to-end platform. You can explore data pulled from your CRM IR app and IR website in the same dashboard — everything is just a few clicks of your mouse away.
Warning Sign #2: Personal Redundancies
Redundancy is another sign you’re working against a silo. Silos extend beyond your technology. Offices can also suffer from a broad information silo.
An information silo describes any work setting or business model that suppresses open communication between teams and departments. Technology silos can exacerbate these issues, but they don’t create them; they’re baked right into your company’s practices. Without this communication, individuals cannot know what other people in and out of their departments are doing.
Unawareness can lead to redundancies. Two separate teams can take on projects with overlapping tasks. Rather than divvying up these tasks to save time, both teams complete them separately.
Management can avoid these inefficiencies by establishing regular check-ins — both on an individual level and a department-wide scale. These meetings can keep other managers abreast of what’s going on with other teams. When assigning tasks, clarify who and what they will be doing to eliminate confusion.
Warning Sign #3: Interdepartmental Suspicion
This last and final sign is usually the result of both information and tech silos that have been in place too long. Eventually, work culture can sour under these administrative styles, spreading a silo mentality.
While silo mentality can be unintentional, like the examples shared in the section above, it’s most often deliberate. It causes people to refuse to work together with others. They might not want to share information, believing that they should be the only ones dealing with a task. This causes them to re-enforce silos in a misplaced sense of stewardship over the project.
When left to fester, silo mentality can turn spiteful. Teams may even try to sabotage other teams by hoarding data when they know their tasks overlap.
Did any of these warning signs sound familiar? Watch out — you could be working in a tech or information silo.
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