So many organizations struggle with silos.
Some form from disunity or misalignment—but many simply happen because team members get caught in their own bubbles. Head down. Focused on their tasks. Doing their best in their own square footage. And in that focus, they lose sight of the big picture: how their work impacts others and how others work impacts them.
To breakdown silos, we must consider holding both the shared identity of being team as well as being part of a team.
The common focus on working as individuals
In the U.S., we often default to individual work—managing our own lanes, getting through our own workload, achieving our own personal goals.
Traditional performance reviews and bonus structures often reinforce this focus on individual, rather than team, performance. This in turn reinforces individual identity and one's commitment to drive personal contribution.
Collaboration without collective identity is like a bunch of puzzle pieces trying to fit together without having the picture on the puzzle box to reference. No matter how good of a puzzle piece a team member is, they will always be limited in their capacity as an individual contributor.
Why collectives matter
Inside a healthy collective, something profound happens:
- A deeper sense of community grows.
- Belonging strengthens.
- Inclusion becomes natural.
- Impact amplifies.
This is why we organize into organizations in the first place—to come together to work towards a shared purpose; because coming together creates possibilities and outcomes we cannot accomplish alone.
Organizations unlock a world of meaningful, complex conversations and exchanges. We discover unexpected insights, new awareness, and innovation that simply don’t emerge at the same scale when we’re siloed or solo.
Interdependency Awareness: the shift that dissolves silos
One of the most powerful concepts we teach in our workshop on breaking silos is Interdependency Awareness:
Each piece is mission critical to the whole—and the whole is mission critical to each piece.
This honors both personal agency and the larger ecosystem we contribute to.
An analogy we share is the murmuration of starlings—thousands of birds instinctively moving together, forming dynamic, fluid shapes in the sky.
A collective intelligence. A shared responsiveness.
Each bird distinct, yet unmistakably part of something larger.
When interdependency is present, the team becomes capable of something far greater than the sum of its parts.
Helping team members see their role—and each other’s
It’s essential that team members understand both:
- How their role matters, and
- How their coworkers’ roles matter.
This doesn’t require lengthy cross-training or departmental show-and-tells.
Just awareness.
Once that awareness anchors in, something shifts:
Team members begin to see what to request from each other to make work easier and more effective. They begin asking how they can support one another with more ease and velocity. They see the system—not just the tasks.
This mutual understanding strengthens bridges naturally.
Bridging silos requires a mindset shift
Bridging silos requires a team-wide shift in being present to the macro while working on the micro.
When people understand the whole—and their part within the whole—it changes what gets prioritized, what gets shared, and what ultimately gets accomplished.
It creates a more fluid, connected, interdependent workplace where people experience themselves as essential to something meaningful.
Here’s to bridging silos in your organization—and to the remarkable things your team can create when they move as one.
