Building your adaptive capacity in the ever-changing workplace of today requires the skill of unlearning. One area of organizational challenge where that is needed more than ever is when it comes to tackling the challenge of departments working in separate silos.

To have effective cross-functional communication and collaboration within and between areas of the organization, here are 3 ways you can adapt and build needed bridges between workplace silos.

1. Adapt Focus: Put Relationships at the Center

Many organizations pride themselves on being customer-centric and have the satisfaction and relationship of their clients as the motivation for their purpose. However, in the stress of change, workload, the shift back to working in the office at least part of the week and struggling to attract and retain talent, it’s easy to lose sight of the need to nurture the relationships employees have with each other.

A common response to feeling overwhelmed at work is to put your nose to the grindstone and just try to knock things off your to-do list so you can hand the project over to the next person. For long-term sustainable success, a relational focus trumps a transactional focus. When there’s trust and respect between people who feel connected, you can surmount any challenge. When human connections are frayed or forgotten, it’s tough to built trust and cooperation, especially in a crisis.

2. Adapt Meetings: Intentional Connection and Collaboration

The challenge of interdepartmental coordination is not new. When you have time-sensitive handover of work processes from one silo to the next, the risk is always there that something falls between the cracks or the schedule starts to slip. Not only is this frustrating but it can be costly in terms of rework, morale and distrust of “those people” in another department who just seem to make your job harder because you aren’t getting what you need when you need it from them.

One common solution is to schedule a meeting to bridge the gap. But the meeting needs to have a purpose other than simply information exchange and progress updates. Otherwise it can devolve into a more sophisticated version of “show and tell” that we all did in grade school. This can be especially frustrating when information sharing could be done asynchronously via email or other methods.

Create time and space in the meeting for collaboration and discussion. Be prepared to problem-solve and get input on issues that aren’t working well, and take the time to voice appreciation for what is working well. Encourage team members to ask questions, contribute ideas, and give them meaningful time on the agenda to at least get a start on how to tackle problems. Time invested in designing and running intentional and relevant meetings delivers a huge return on impact in the long run.

3. Adapt Expectations: Clarify Your Context and Assumptions

As a facilitator and coach, quite often the source of conflict and friction is not having a common understanding of the context of the issue under discussion. We perceive the world around us based on our experiences, filters and biases. So often I encounter the same word in the same language may have a very different connotation in one department than in another area of the same organization that impacts scope of work and what’s needed to collaborate and coordinate well.

Before jumping into fix-it mode, pause to ensure you have a common understanding of the bigger context and needs first. Articulate your assumptions and see if they are shared. Take the time to ensure you’re operating from a sound and common frame of reference as a foundation, and then build, innovate, collaborate and problem solve from there.

If you’re interested in ways to help your organization unlearn and build its adaptive capacity, let’s connect!