I worked with a group of people inside of a company where two departments shared the same space but were very siloed. Literally the right hand did not know what the left hand did. How common is this situation.....unfortunately very common. In the busyness of getting work done, people tend to discount the importance and value of getting to know others in the company or what they do and how they all may be able to help each other in some way.
There was an assumption that one department was really not part of the company but in fact, contractors who were working there to provide the service and they were well staffed and not interested in helping out the other department which was short-staffed, overwhelmed in what they were suppose to accomplish and who had no idea who people were who visited regularly or what their roles were.
We went through exercises (everyone in the room) of having each department explain what they did and what they thought the other department did (roles and duties). People were surprised what they learned from each other and clarity allowed for a deeper understanding of each department. They shared common goals and aspiration and values. At the end in their "next steps" they collaborated on agreeing to some needed changes they both wanted to implement such as tours of each department, cross-trainings between departments; better communicating when help was needed by someone and removing the stigmatism that the one department wasn't a contractor but in fact employees of the same company. Management from both departments were going to sit down and create a committee to meet regularly to create an environment of collaboration, clarity and more communication.
If this approach had been implemented many years back, personnel changes probably would have been minimailized, a sense of "we are all in this together" would have been the theme and open communication would have been prevalent. All good lessons learned by many and why I love what I do.
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