#Silo mentality professional#

Gaining and maintaining necessary customer satisfaction does not necessarily lead to profitable income.

Marketing, defined as “the management process of anticipating and satisfying customer demand profitably,” is at the centre of “Business Operations,” which must include all the traditional marketing activities, but also those of production or service provision, as well as research and development. Commercial managers must think beyond the confines of textbook definitions. The area of Business Support, provides the necessary resources for the Business Operations area, mainly finance and personnel. Previous experience and specialization must not be allowed to bias necessary objectivity or decision making.īusiness organizations may be considered in two parts Business Operations and Business Support. The commercial manager must view all the business getting and retaining activities as contributing to the generation of sustainable profitable revenue. In all probability, the majority of businesses would be hard pressed to quantify how much they actually spend or invest in getting and retaining business and might be surprised at the true costs involved. If managing assets and resources to produce profitable income is the responsibility of a commercial manager, then using performance measurements not just for sales but across all customer related activities is essential for their effective management. However, the generation of sustainable profitable income for the long term future of any business requires the collective management of all the customer related activities under a single manager. Businesses make money by producing goods and services which customers want to buy.

#Silo mentality professional#

Here are a few related cartoons I’ve drawn over the years.Whatever maybe the perceived importance of specialist business activities, the prime purpose of any business is to make money, for the benefit of the owners and the workforce, regardless of whether it is a business for manufacturing, retail or professional services. Like working out, it’s not about flipping a switch or adding on a new technology, and being finished. An HBR article a few years ago made the case that it still works, and advised dusting it off and applying it as a solution to today’s organizational silos. I like the idea behind the GE Work-Out Process.

A siloed organization that suddenly starts using Slack is still siloed. Communication tools alone won’t break the default state. Left unaddressed, silos get ever more engrained. The silo mentality is the default state of organizations. I stumbled across a study from NewVoiceMedia of customer experience executives that concluded that silo thinking is the “single biggest hindrance to corporate growth.” They found that 41% pegged “organizational structure as a significant barrier to providing a seamless customer experience.” The “boundaryless organization” that Jack Welch imagined is still not widespread. Thirty years later, despite new tools and technology to make it easier than ever to communicate within organizations, the silo mentality is ever-present. Ann Handley, Chief Content Officer of MarketingProfs Order Now