Silos rarely appear overnight.
They form quietly, over time, usually in organizations full of competent, well-intentioned people. Teams focus. Accountability improves. Expertise deepens. And somewhere along the way, what started as clarity turns into separation.
When leaders talk about silos, the tone is often moral. As if silos were the result of selfishness or bad attitudes. In my experience, they are far more often the product of perfectly rational decisions that interact in unfortunate ways. The uncomfortable part is that leaders, often without realizing it, play a decisive role in reinforcing them.
Incentives that reward isolation
One of the most reliable ways to create silos is to reward teams exclusively on local success. Delivery against one roadmap. Cost control within one perimeter. Performance metrics that stop neatly at organizational borders. People respond to incentives. If success is measured locally, collaboration becomes optional, and optional collaboration is the first thing to disappear under pressure. Leaders then express surprise that teams optimize their own outcomes even when it hurts the whole.
The fix is not to dilute accountability, but to balance it. Local objectives need to coexist with shared outcomes that genuinely matter. When part of success depends on collective results, cooperation stops feeling altruistic and starts feeling normal.
Identity that hardens too early
Teams need identity. It gives pride and coherence. Problems start when identity becomes a wall rather than a foundation. When people introduce themselves primarily as “the infrastructure team”, “the data people”, or “the business side”, language begins to signal separation. Decisions are framed as negotiations between tribes. Context is filtered. Assumptions multiply.
Leaders often reinforce this unintentionally by speaking in the same categories, or by consistently addressing teams only within their own verticals. Over time, identity solidifies around boundaries instead of purpose.
The fix here is subtle. It’s about regularly reframing work in terms of shared problems rather than organizational boxes. Naming outcomes before functions. Talking about flows instead of handovers. Identity doesn’t disappear, but it loosens enough to allow movement.
Language that excludes without intending to
Every silo develops quickly its own dialect. Acronyms, shortcuts, references that feel efficient internally and opaque externally. This is rarely malicious. It’s usually a sign of expertise. But language is also a gatekeeper. When conversations become hard to enter, people stop entering them. Leaders often reinforce this by tolerating, or even celebrating, complexity as a sign of sophistication. Meetings become unintentionally exclusive. Decisions are made among those who “speak the language”.
The fix is not simplification for its own sake, but translation. Leaders who consistently ask for explanations in plain language send a powerful signal. They make it legitimate to ask, to clarify, to challenge. Over time, language opens instead of closing.
Visibility that follows hierarchy, not value
What gets seen gets valued. In many organizations, visibility follows reporting lines rather than impact. Teams doing critical cross-functional work remain invisible because their contribution doesn’t fit neatly into a single narrative. Others become highly visible simply because they are closer to power or communication channels.
Leaders often reinforce this by showcasing achievements within silos, unintentionally training the organization on what counts. Collaboration becomes risky when it reduces individual visibility. The fix is deliberate storytelling. Making cross-team success visible. Naming shared wins explicitly. Giving credit in ways that reflect how value is actually created, not how org charts are drawn.
What ties it all together
Silos persist because they are comfortable. They reduce complexity locally while increasing it globally. Breaking them does not require grand reorganization. It requires attention to the small signals leaders send every day.
- How success is rewarded.
- How problems are named.
- How language is tolerated.
- How visibility is distributed.
When these elements are aligned, silos lose their grip. Not because collaboration is enforced, but because it becomes the path of least resistance. Leaders rarely create silos on purpose. But they dismantle them only when they accept that structure follows behavior, and behavior follows signals.
