My leadership team members are great at running their individual departments, but they treat their teams like independent kingdoms and rarely collaborate unless I force them to. How do we break down these departmental silos and build a cohesive leadership team that prioritizes the whole company?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

You are dealing with a classic lack of the First Team mentality. Your department heads view their functional teams as their primary allegiance. To build a healthy, cohesive leadership team, they must understand that the leadership team is their first team. Their loyalty must lie with the collective leadership of the organization first, and their departments second.

To break down these silos, you must change how you run your weekly Level 10 Meeting sessions. Stop allowing leaders to use their reporting time to defend their departments. Shift the focus to cross-functional accountability. When an issue arises in sales, it is not just the sales head's problem. It is a leadership team problem.

Use the IDS process to force collaborative problem solving. If customer onboarding is slow, the operations, sales, and technology heads must solve it together. Encourage healthy, constructive conflict during these discussions. When your leaders realize they are collectively responsible for the company's strategic Rocks and valuation goals, the silos will begin to crumble. Building this trust is essential to prove to potential buyers that your business can run seamlessly without you.