Organizational Silos Are Like Gravity. You Don’t Hope Them Away. You can’t culture-doc them into nonexistence. You Engineer Around Them.
There is no perfect organization. Silos are inevitable.
They form naturally — geographic, functional, operational gravity.
They form intentionally — when you design a structure to scale accountability, you create new boundaries.
The mistake leaders make isn’t creating silos.
The mistake is failing to install anti-silo mechanisms that detect, dampen, and bridge them over time.
Silos are like gravity. You don’t fight gravity with good intentions. You fight it with engineering.
Silos Are the Cost of Scale
When humans group up, they specialize.
Specialization creates local optimization.
Local optimization creates walls.
At small scale, you can brute-force collaboration through proximity and relationships.
At scale, you can’t. Even if you design the org chart perfectly today, silos will emerge tomorrow. New projects. New leaders. New pressures. Entropy is relentless.
Structure is necessary — but structure alone isn’t sufficient. Without active anti-silo mechanisms, every org eventually rots behind its own walls.
Anti-Silo Mechanisms: The Only Real Defense
If you’ve read Mechanisms, you know:
“A mechanism has an owner, clear inputs and outputs, and exists independent of any one leader’s energy.”
An owner is always a named individual, never a team.
A mechanism without a single, accountable human is a dead mechanism.
Silo-busting doesn’t happen because you tell people to “collaborate better.” It happens because you install mechanisms that force visibility, trust, and shared accountability across boundaries.
A Pragmatic Inventory of Anti-Silo Mechanisms
Not all anti-silo mechanisms are obvious.
Some are classic.
Some are non-intuitive.
The best organizations use both.
Classic Anti-Silo Mechanisms
- Cross-Team Reviews
Input: Work in progress across teams
Output: Cross-team feedback, surfaced dependencies
Owner: Named individual (e.g., program manager) - Shared OKRs
Input: Jointly accountable key results
Output: Alignment that forces teams to work together to win
Owner: Named executive across participating orgs - Cross-Functional Projects
Input: Temporary teams built around a customer outcome, not a silo boundary
Output: Customer impact that no single org could deliver alone
Owner: Named initiative lead
Non-Intuitive Anti-Silo Mechanisms
Peer Coaching Across Silos
When I built the Alexa Smart Home org, we created STOs (Single-Threaded Organizations) for each domain. Each domain — Lighting, Cameras, Locks, etc. — represented a distinct customer-facing scenario area within the Alexa Smart Home product. Each had a dedicated STO (Single-Threaded Owner) — a leader accountable end-to-end for that experience.
The structure worked — but it created silos. To bridge them, I installed a cross-coaching mechanism.
- Sharbani (STL for Cameras) was a Product leader.
- Ganesh (STL for Lighting) was an Engineering leader.
I paired them:
- Sharbani coached Ganesh on Product leadership.
- Ganesh coached Sharbani on Engineering leadership.
Inputs: growth ambition, cross-silo pairing
Outputs: cross-functional empathy, trust, early tension detection
Owner: Me
Durability Mechanisms: Quarterly check-ins and baked into STL expectations
This wasn’t just mentorship. It was a mechanism.
Embedded Roles
Embed specialists (PM, marketing, finance) into adjacent teams. Dual loyalty forces context-sharing and breaks down walls.
Rotation Programs
Temporary stints in another org build empathy that lasts. You only need a few — not a program at scale.
Customer Journey Reviews
Instead of reviewing output team-by-team, inspect full customer journeys. Force everyone to see how their work connects (or doesn’t) from the customer’s perspective.
Cross-Org Operational Updates (Recruiting Example)
For Alexa Smart Home, I grew the team from 7 to 150 people in under a year. I ran a Weekly Recruiting Update where every hiring manager reported:
- Open positions
- Pipeline status
- Blockers
The primary goal was hiring velocity. The secondary effect: people managers who didn’t normally interact got exposed to each other’s context. It built empathy and alignment across org boundaries.
Inputs: Hiring data from all people managers
Outputs: Hiring urgency, cross-org visibility, informal bridges, and coaching moments.
Owner: Me
Durability Mechanisms: Dashboard + Weeky Cadence
Auditing Mechanisms
Silos thrive on a lack of visibility. Auditing kills that oxygen. Auditing isn’t about punishment. It’s about systematically inspecting details so you can detect decay before it metastasizes.
Leader Dive Deep Audits
Diving deep does not mean micromanagement. Senior leaders personally inspect:
- Random support tickets
- Raw service metrics
- Cross-team tech designs
Inputs: Unfiltered operational artifacts
Outputs: Early detection of hidden friction, sloppiness, duplication
Owner: Named VP/GM
Durability Mechanisms: Cadence-based inspections and sampling
Systematized Surface Audits (Paper Cuts Example)
At Control4/SnapOne, I inherited 4,700+ SKUs — many were aging and neglected.
I created the Paper Cuts Mechanism.
A Paper Cut (also called a Broken Window) is bug, defect, or missing feature directly impacting the customer experience that won’t normally get fixed due to resource constraints. Broken Windows exist in products, code, packaging, documentation, bug database, knowledge management systems, etc.
Inputs: Minor issues from across the product portfolio
Outputs: System-wide visibility into sloppiness, permission to obsess over customers
Owner: Head of Product
Durability Mechanisms: Paper Cuts Dashboard + Monthly Review
Pragmatic Guidance
If you aren’t building explicit anti-silo mechanisms, you’re not leading — you’re hoping.
- Name your silos — Visibility beats resentment
- Install real mechanisms — With single human owners
- Normalize inspection — Audit people, processes, and mechanisms themselves
- Reward surfacing issues early — Punish hiding, not imperfection
Silos aren’t evil.
Pretending they won’t form is.
Want help engineering anti-silo rockets? I coach execs through this exact stuff. My open Office Hours are here.
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