Summary
Breaking Down Silos Production and engineering rarely fail due to incompetence. They fail because they optimize for different goals and speak different dialects. Cross functional silos cannot be fixed by redrawing the org chart. Discover how to create a shared operating language through a Team Charter and build resilient connections long before the next crisis forces you to cooperate.
Two departments, one product, and still two truths. Until the crisis forces both to finally speak the same language.
This post is written for leaders who stand at the border between plant and engineering and feel the friction daily. For the plant manager whose team does not understand engineering, and the engineering lead whose design fails in production. For anyone who has seen two strong departments work past each other on the same task. And for all who suspect that breaking down silos is not a question of structure but of shared language.
Why silos are not a structural problem but a language problem
Two departments rarely fail because one works worse than the other. They fail because they mean the same word differently, optimize for different goals, and celebrate different wins. Production measures volume and stability, engineering measures innovation and deadline, and both take their view for the whole truth. A silo is therefore less a wall in the org chart than a gap in the shared language, and exactly this gap can be closed.
What Peter in Prievidza taught me about silos
When a competitor bought my team away
My name is Andy Balbus. During my time as Director Electronics in Prievidza I watched a competitor buy us away employee by employee, a whole small group out of my electronics department. The team dissolved in record time, and I suddenly stood before a gap I had not planned.
Why I understood every departure
I understood every single one of these employees. In Slovakia salaries were and are lower than in Germany, and when a competitor offers a multiple above the usual salary, families in particular fall into a stress situation. However great the team, the company, and the task may be, in the end the euro counts. I could fully grasp the decision of the three employees and let them go with some sadness.
The real dilemma
Here the real problem began. With every person who left, my electronics department lost competence and capacity at once for these tasks, and I stood before the question of how we were supposed to deliver the committed projects at all.
The tasks remained, the deadlines remained, only the people who could have carried them were gone. In such a situation it is decided whether a silo becomes a trap or an unexpected door opens.
Peter from the other silo
And here Peter came into play. Peter was the local quality manager and worked in an entirely different silo, his domain was motors and production, with electronics he had nothing to do per se. By every usual silo logic my crisis would not have been his problem. Yet Peter did not think in departments, he thought in Prievidza.
Why Peter saw Prievidza, not his silo
In the crisis Peter did not see electronics and his own area as separate worlds but the site as a whole. To not let the cross-departmental development down, he helped our electronics with his team, and together we started a completely different approach to the task. This approach not only helped in the acute moment, it lastingly raised the understanding for the overall product across departmental lines. What I learned that day I have passed to every client since: the good connection on equal footing helped incredibly in the crisis, and such connections must be forged before the crisis is here. Once it is here, it is too late.
A silo does not break open when the crisis calls, but when the connection already stands. Whoever looks for Peter only in the emergency will no longer find him.
Andy Balbus, 25+ years automotive, DE-SK-IN
You feel the friction between your departments and want to dissolve it before the next crisis hits? Then let us look together at where your shared operating language is missing. The Reality Check is a 30-minute diagnostic conversation, no slides, no sales pitch.
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What the numbers say about silo thinking
75 percent of cross-functional teams fail
The friction between departments is no exception, it is the norm. The Harvard researcher Behnam Tabrizi studied 95 cross-functional teams across 25 leading corporations and evaluated them against five criteria: budget, schedule, specification, customer expectation, and alignment with company goals. The result is sobering: nearly 75 percent of these teams are dysfunctional, three of four fail on at least three of the five criteria. Not because individual people are incapable, but because unclear responsibility, missing shared goals, and different measures of success systematically undermine the collaboration.
Almost everyone sees silos, almost nobody dissolves them
How widespread the problem is shows up in a survey by the American Management Association. According to it, 83 percent of executives recognize silos in their own organization, and 97 percent report that these silos negatively affect business outcomes. Almost everyone sees the problem, and almost everyone feels the damage, and still the silo thinking persists. A related pattern, where status reports smooth over reality, is described in the post on the green melon effect. The reason is simple: silos are not a structural problem that could be solved by an org chart, but a leadership and language problem. You cannot organize your way out of silos created by how people behave, you have to create a shared language.
Three Honest Questions Before You Read On
When did your production and your engineering last work on the same goal, measured against the same criteria?
Do your leaders know the colleagues from the other departments well enough to call them at once in a crisis?
And is there a shared language for the overall product at your company, or does each department speak its own dialect?
If you hesitate on one of these questions, the next section is for you.
Creating a shared operating language: the BYG path in three steps
1. From the silo to the whole: seeing the overall product
Step one is a change of perspective, exactly the one Peter made. The reference point is not the own department but the overall product and the site as a whole. Make the shared goal so visible that it stands above the departmental goals, and measure both sides against the same criteria, for example with the SMART method for shared, verifiable goals. The mindset behind it is described in the BYG core principles, and how different views become productive rather than destructive is shown in the post on the team storming phase.
2. Anchor the shared operating language in the team charter
Step two turns a good intention into a binding foundation. A team charter is exactly that: the cross-departmental operating language in which terms, roles, and decision paths mean the same to everyone. In the Team Charter Workshop production and engineering work out this language together instead of having it imposed from above, and how a team develops such rules together at all is shown in the post on team charter rules. What missing shared terms cost is made visible by the post on the translation tax. For the understanding to truly succeed, it takes the craft of open-ended questions and active listening, and a climate where each side objects openly, as the post on psychological safety describes.
3. Forge connections before the crisis comes
Step three is the one Peter had unconsciously already taken before my crisis began. Build the connections between the departments deliberately while no emergency forces it, because in the crisis it is too late. A regular Gemba Walk through the other department builds exactly this understanding, and where friction arises from unresolved conflicts at the interface, industrial conflict architecture is the lever. How such bridges are built across cultures and sites is shown by intercultural mentoring.
You want to turn two silos into one team with one language?
Go to the Team Charter Workshop: the cross-departmental operating language
Or book your Reality Check directly: 30 minutes, only your situation
Voices from the Field
Why these two voices on a page about silo thinking? Tanaya Deole rates BYG explicitly at the organisational level and stresses the cultural sensitivity, exactly the perspective that counts when two departments must find a shared language. Valentine Nelaev, in turn, judges from more than 18 years in technically complex industrial environments, where friction between disciplines is everyday, and confirms the clarity and depth such a bridge needs.
Interactions with Andy Balbus have always been insightful, ending up with me having some food for thought! Brewed for decades, his experience, initiatives and cultural sensitivity help him connect with us quickly and in an impactful way. BYG services are highly recommended on individual as well as organisational level.
Tanaya Deole, Google review
Every question I posed received a clear, direct, and well-considered response, and each matter was discussed in meticulous detail. What particularly impressed me was that even the most unexpected questions were met with thoughtful, insightful solutions.
Valentine Nelaev, Project Execution Expert, 18+ years oil and gas
FAQ: Straight Answers to Skeptical Questions
Q1: What exactly is meant by silo thinking?
Silo thinking describes the tendency of departments to see only their own goals, metrics, and wins and to lose sight of the overall product. Each department optimizes for itself and takes its own view for the whole truth, while the handovers between the areas belong to nobody. The result is friction, duplicated work, and errors at the interfaces. More terms around collaboration and leadership are explained in the glossary.
Q2: Why is silo thinking not a purely structural problem?
Because silos cannot be dissolved by an org chart. You can re-cut departments and still keep the same behavior, if the shared language and the shared goal are missing. Research shows that almost all executives see silos and feel their damage, and still they persist. The lever therefore lies in behavior and language, not in structure alone.
Q3: What is a shared operating language?
A shared operating language is a common understanding of what central terms, roles, and decision paths mean for everyone involved. When production and engineering understand the same word the same way and measure the same goal the same way, a large part of the friction disappears on its own. Exactly this language is worked out together and recorded bindingly in the Team Charter Workshop.
Q4: How does a team charter concretely help against silo thinking?
The team charter makes the unspoken visible and binding. It clarifies who makes which decision, what which terms mean, and against which shared goals both sides are measured. Because the participants work it out themselves, they also carry it, instead of dismissing it as yet another rule from above. That turns two dialects into one language.
Q5: Is the friction between production and engineering not simply normal?
A certain tension is normal and even healthy, because production and engineering legitimately have different priorities. It only turns harmful when productive tension becomes a working against each other in which each side blocks the other. The difference lies in the shared language and the shared goal, as the post on the team storming phase shows.
Q6: How do I start when the fronts are already hardened?
Best not with a big restructuring but with genuine mutual understanding. Let the leaders of both sides experience the other department in daily work, for example through a Gemba Walk, and begin with a single shared goal against which both sides are measured equally. Understanding before structure, that is the order that dissolves hardened fronts.
Q7: Why should one department help another in a crisis?
Because the crisis of one rarely stays with one. In my situation Peter helped from an entirely different area because he saw the site as a whole and knew that a failure of engineering hits everyone in the end. Whoever protects only their own silo wins in the short term and loses in the long term. How to truly hand over responsibility across area lines is shown in the post on uncompromising delegation. But the willingness to help arises only when the connection existed beforehand.
Q8: How do I build connections between departments before I need them?
Through deliberate, regular points of contact on equal footing, long before a crisis forces them. Shared goals, mutual visits, and a genuine interest in the other side’s work forge the connections that hold in a crisis. I pass this to every client: network properly, because when the crisis is here, it is too late to build the relationship first.
Q9: Does this apply across sites and cultures too?
There above all, because to the departmental silos are then added language and culture borders. Across sites the shared operating language additionally needs the sensitivity for different communication styles. How that works is shown by intercultural mentoring, and how Andy led the cross-departmental build-up in Slovakia by executive sparring Slovakia.
Q10: Who should break down the silo thinking, leadership or the teams?
Both, but leadership goes first. The leaders create the shared goal, the shared language, and the opportunities to connect, the teams fill this frame with real collaboration. If leadership itself thinks in silos and defends only its own area, no workshop in the world will change that. Breaking down silo thinking therefore begins at the top.
Q11: How does BYG concretely help with breaking down silos?
The core is the Team Charter Workshop, which anchors the shared operating language between the departments. For the genuine mutual understanding on site, the Gemba Walk method page is the lever, and how such bridges work in real starting situations is shown in the case studies.
The next step out of the silo
If this post describes your departments, start where the shared language arises: with the Team Charter Workshop, which brings production and engineering to one table, or with the Gemba Walk method page, which builds mutual understanding. For the individual development of leaders who need to lead across silos there is engineering leadership coaching, for the acute relief of overloaded teams there is Accelerate Now, and anyone who wants to develop team leads toward cross-departmental thinking will find the frame in team lead mentoring.
About the author: three worlds at one table
You do not break down silos from a textbook but from the experience at the interface itself. Andy Balbus brings together three worlds that rarely meet in one person: 25+ years of operational automotive responsibility with 150M € revenue accountability and an R&D hub of 40+ engineers built greenfield, the methodology of an ICF PCC certified coach with more than 1,000 hours, and the intercultural perspective of four years as the accountable executive in Slovakia plus two years in Pune, with experience across DE, SK, IN, CN, MX, and UK. He has stood at the border between production and engineering himself and seen how a connection on equal footing saves a whole department.
Results or Excuses: The Reality Check
The next crisis does not ask whether your departments already know each other, it takes it for granted. The Reality Check is a 30-minute diagnostic conversation: you bring an interface where things keep snagging between production and engineering, and together we find the point where the shared language is missing, with the combined view from leadership, coaching, and culture change. No slides, no sales pitch, only your reality and a bridge that holds.
Book your Reality Check: 30 minutes, only your situation
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