THE CASE: When Your Teams Fight Harder Than They Collaborate
Meena is the Chief Product Officer at a growing SaaS company with 180 employees. On paper, everything looks good: Product is shipping features quarterly, Engineering is hitting sprint goals, Sales is closing deals, Customer Success is handling tickets.
But something is broken.
Last quarter, Sales missed their target by 23%. In the post-mortem, the Sales VP blamed Product: "They're building features nobody asked for." Product fired back: "Sales doesn't understand our roadmap and keeps making promises we can't deliver." Customer Success was caught in the middle, drowning in support tickets from confused customers about features that weren't properly launched.
Meena realized: Her teams weren't just disconnected—they were actively working against each other.
Companies with strong collaboration are 4.5X more likely to achieve higher growth. But most organizations say they value collaboration, yet their systems—reward structures, KPIs, communication norms—optimize for departmental success, not company-wide success.
How Silos Form
- Departmental KPIs over company KPIs – Sales measured on revenue, Product on features, Engineering on velocity. Nobody measured on "how well did we work together?"
- Leadership team dysfunction – If executives don't model collaboration, their teams won't either
- Information hoarding – When knowledge becomes power, people protect it rather than share it
- Lack of shared rituals – Teams that never interact informally don't build trust
- Blame culture – When things go wrong, the instinct is "who failed?" not "what broke?"
The Evidence
4.5X higher growth with strong collaboration (Salesforce)
86% blame lack of collaboration for failures (Salesforce)
30% of project delays from poor communication (PMI)
20% reduction in innovation in siloed orgs (HBR)
3X faster problem-solving in cross-functional teams (McKinsey)
25% higher retention with transparent communication (LinkedIn)
The Cross-Functional Autopsy
Step 1: Identify a Shared Success and Failure (30 minutes)
Pick one significant customer win from the past quarter. Pick one significant customer failure (lost deal, major churn, product failure).
Step 2: Map the Customer Journey Together (90 minutes)
Bring together 3-4 representatives from each department that touched both outcomes: Sales, Product, Engineering, Customer Success, Marketing.
For the success: Map the customer journey on a whiteboard:
- What did Sales promise?
- What did Product build?
- How did Engineering deliver it?
- How did Customer Success support it?
- What were the key handoffs between teams?
Identify: Where did collaboration work?
For the failure: Do the same. Identify: Where did collaboration break?
Critical rule: Focus on "what happened," not "who failed."
Step 3: Identify Systemic Disconnects (30 minutes)
After mapping both journeys, ask:
- "Where did information fail to transfer between teams?"
- "Where did priorities conflict?"
- "Where did handoffs create delays or confusion?"
- "What would need to change for this failure not to happen again?"
Write down 2-3 systemic issues (not personal blame).
The Experiment: "No-Silo Fridays"
For the next 4 weeks, run this experiment:
Every Friday at 4 PM, host a 15-minute all-hands "No-Silo Friday" session.
Format: One representative from each department (rotating weekly) presents:
- Biggest win this week (30 seconds)
- Biggest challenge this week (30 seconds)
- One thing another team could help with (30 seconds)
What happens within 4 weeks:
- Increased empathy – People understand what other teams are struggling with
- Spontaneous collaboration – "Hey, I heard your challenge. I might be able to help."
- Visibility – Leadership sees bottlenecks they didn't know existed
Building a Unified Organization
Breaking silos isn't a one-time fix. It's a cultural shift that requires:
- Shared Metrics – Create company-wide metrics that require collaboration: Customer Lifetime Value, Net Revenue Retention, Time-to-Value
- Leadership Alignment – Your executive team must model collaboration
- Cross-Functional Projects – Regularly assign projects that require collaboration
- Shared Rituals – Weekly all-hands, monthly cross-functional workshops, quarterly off-sites
- Psychological Safety – Collaboration thrives where people feel safe
Sources & References
- Lencioni, Patrick M. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. Jossey-Bass, 2002.
- Collins, Jim. Good to Great. HarperBusiness, 2001.
- Coyle, Daniel. The Culture Code. Bantam Press, 2018.
- Salesforce Research. State of the Connected Customer Report. 2023.
- McKinsey & Company. Organizational Agility and Collaboration Study. 2022.
- Harvard Business Review. "Breaking Down Silos." 2021.
Key Takeaways
- Silos don't form because people are territorial—they form because systems don't prioritize collaboration
- The Cross-Functional Autopsy reveals systemic gaps, not personal blame
- No-Silo Fridays create visibility, empathy, and spontaneous collaboration
- Shared metrics force departments to work toward common goals
- When your teams pull in the same direction, growth accelerates exponentially