Keynote Address: Tearing Down Silos to Drive Success in Prepaid

Speaker:

Carol Kinsey Gorman, Ph.D., Author, Coach and Consultant, Kinsey Consulting Services

Carol began her keynote address with a story about her husband and the collaboration she encountered from the hospital team when he was at the hospital for a couple of weeks. Just like her example, she mentions that the secret to a successful business is a highly collaborative culture. No matter the industry, eliminating silos in the business model is crucial to the successful growth of an organization. Silos have been around since the early 1920’s, and so it has been branded into the minds of executives for a very long time.

Carol gave an example of how IT departments generally have a tough time communicating what they do to executives. Most successful organizations bring the business managers of different divisions and business units and given them an opportunity to understand the IT team's capabilities and offerings in order to communicate it back to their respective business units. By bringing in these managers, companies now have opened up communication between their business units and IT team.

Carol then highlighted the detriment of hoarding knowledge within organizations. The “hoarding instinct” comes into play now especially because of our economic situation. People want to store information and knowledge within themselves and not share it across different business teams. She highlights that very successful organizations often actively pursue spreading such knowledge across the organization and improve understanding and communication. Businesses must be open to change because it is what will keep then competitive during these tough times.

Silos not only cause duplication of efforts, lack of innovation, and lack of communication, but it directly results in the loss of efficiencies and dollars tied to the bottom line. Here's a brief excerpt from Carol's presentation:

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