Are workplace silos a productivity drain on your company? Typically, silos lead to redundancies, poor communication, reduced trust, and often pit one department or group against another. As we like to say: It’s best to compete with your competitors, not your co-workers.

In Breaking Down Silos: Unleash the Power of Alignment participants explore how silos form, the impact they have upon workplace culture, morale and productivity, and most importantly, how to move past the silo mentality towards unified, high performance teamwork. Program strategies and tools include: Predictable Communication Breakdowns, Communication Mapping, and the creation of a Thematic Goal, which provides the vital context necessary for groups or departments to work well together.

The program will guide team members to:

• Recognize the costs of silo thinking on themselves and the organization
• Describe behaviors that build trust and respect between team members
• Identify the core issues facing the group over the next 6 to 12 months
• Work through the Thematic Goal process
• Improve communication by seeing past barriers
• Develop ground rules that lead to a more cohesive team environment including:
• Meetings: How they should be run; acceptable and un-acceptable behaviors
• Communication: What types of information are communicated by email, phone, or meetings; how to address predictable communication breakdowns (PCBs).
• Accountability: How collective accountability can be achieved
• Trust: Which behaviors indicate trust or a lack of trust
• Conflict Management: What the rules of engagement are for resolving conflicts

In this difficult economy, it is more important than ever for teams and departments to be in on the same page. Teams that work against one another to achieve narrowly defined goals at the expense of other groups in the organization create an environment where politics – the art of strategic dis-ingenuousness – takes precedence over collectively achieving results.

In Breaking Down Silos: Unleash the Power of Alignment participants discover how to build a healthy, powerful work environment through the pursuit and achievement of a Thematic Goal. This process keeps teams focused during good times and provides a sturdy infrastructure during difficult periods. Working as a unified, focused, high performance team is enormously gratifying for every team member. We’ll show you how.