Working in Silos: A Coffee and Reflections with José Quesada Campos
I love talking about work system design because it is the foundation of human values, collaboration, and burnout prevention.
So… if we want to create conscious companies and promote conscious leadership, we need to talk about work design.
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Today, José Quesada Campos, Global Value Improvement Manager LATAM at Boston Scientific, joined me on my YouTube channel for an in-depth conversation about working in silos, metrics, expected results, and how system design can make collaboration a logical choice.
Because work needs to be designed in a way that encourages people to collaborate.
01) To start with, why do so many departments work in silos? Is it a lack of shared values, or what is the reason for this lack of collaboration?
José Quesada Campos reflects during the interview:
“Many times, we see silos as people who don’t collaborate… when, in fact, the system is pushing these people in different directions.”
“We can have two teams with very good intentions, but if they have different priorities, different metrics, different incentives, or it isn’t clear who makes which decisions, collaboration will have its limits.”
“And these differences can lead to rational selfishness. (…) If the problem is related to design, we won’t solve it by saying, ‘We need to collaborate more.’ We need to review how our system works.”
“Many silos are not caused by bad people or a lack of commitment. They can be the logical result of how a system works.”
02) So, are we talking about a system that doesn’t encourage collaboration?
“I like to think of them as contradictions between what an organisation says and what its system communicates.”
“A system communicates through its metrics, what it rewards, and what it accepts.”
03) How can we identify a system that doesn’t encourage collaboration?
“One of the first questions we should ask ourselves is: What does a person learn they need to do to succeed in this company? The answer will tell us more about the culture than any list of values we have.”
“If an organisation says it values collaboration, but the only people who get promoted are those who achieve individual results, no matter how they achieve them, the system is creating something different.”
04) How can we design work to encourage collaboration?
“I would avoid the temptation to launch a collaboration initiative. First, we need to understand what end-to-end result we want to achieve. If we aren’t clear about the outcome we are looking for, it will be very difficult to align around a shared result.”
“Then, I would ask five simple questions:
What shared result are we trying to achieve? Where do we want to go?
Who is responsible for the overall result?
Who has the authority to make which decisions?
What metrics are we using to understand the behaviour we are creating?
What governance process are we using to connect the different departments?”
05) How can we design governance to maintain strong departments while also encouraging collaboration?
“Breaking down silos doesn’t mean removing specialisation, because we really need strong departments. (…) The challenge is to make sure we don’t operate like separate islands. When two departments have a conflict, someone needs to solve it by looking at the overall result.”
“And if nobody is responsible for that, the system will naturally focus on improving individual results rather than the overall result.”
“Rather than asking people to work as a team, I would design a system where working together is the logical way to achieve results. People should see that working together makes more sense than focusing only on their own department. They should work towards what is best for the company.”
“Before asking for more collaboration, we need to ask ourselves whether the system makes collaboration a rational choice.”
Thank you, José, for this opportunity to think deeply about these topics! Pura vida! Vero Traynor
