What’s wrong with silos?
- Communication between the silos can become difficult, and problems can cascade through the company.
- Silos make the world of permissions a devastating mass of unproductively as people swim upstream to find the tribal knowledge locked away in the silos.
- People attempt to diagram the convoluted jungle paths of interactivity and permissions via road maps. This is a losing battle because the vines continue to grow even as maps are drawn.
Group Discussion: Structure and behavior limitations
Purpose: To collaborate, discuss, and diagram existing team structures.
Steps:
- Using a whiteboard or sticky notes, collectively collaborate on diagraming the existing organizational team structure, team leads, and managers.
Questions:
Where are the pain points or bottle necks within your organization?
Transparency Boosts Decision Making
Transparency improves collaboration, and empowers anyone within the company to see when a project is going off track and help to fix it.
People need three things to participate in decision-making:
- Information which documentation provides
- Access which comes in meetings, communication channels
- Permission which must become part of the InnerSource culture
How to Succeed in Complex Environments
Start with strategy
Below are four steps to encourage a unified vision within your organization:
- Work towards a common goal
- Motivate and incentivize
- Collaborate and create
- Execute and measure
Four step activity questions:
- What are some common goals that the organization can work towards?
- What are some early success criteria that would promote sharing the progress towards those goals?
- What behaviors do you currently incentivize and motivate employees to do?
- How could existing methods be utilized for this initiative?
- What internal projects come to mind when you think of collaboration (Does not need to be developer focused)?
- What do you think causes that(those) project(s) to be successful?
- What can you use in those projects for this initiative?
- What would you want to measure to identify the success of the initiative?