Corporate Silos. Connect the Dots. #cindertoflame

The pandemic is over but let’s travel back to February 2022 when Dr. Theresa Tam (Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer) said that the “virus is not going to disappear” and we need to find our way back to some form of normal life. Let’s reflect upon how our lives have and are changing, then pivot to why it’s critical for Corporations to connect the dots between corporate silos to successfully move forward and prepare for the future.

Dr. Tam’s strategic advice can be stretched beyond the acute and direct impacts of COVID-19 on human health and well-being. Across Canada and abroad, we are experiencing significant municipal, government, and health system challenges that impact every aspect of sustainable, quality living - Cinder to Flame’s vision. https://www.cindertoflame.ca/vision

In health care, we struggle with delayed emergency and health services. This is coupled with workforce gaps, especially primary health care providers, nurses and personal support workers. These issues impact acute and long-term health care, timely diagnosis, life-saving treatment and surgical interventions. In municipalities, people are grappling with household debt due to the high cost of living for necessities such as safe housing and healthy food. We are in the midst of baby boomer retirements and must support a high quality of life for the elderly, this will stretch municipal and health system funding and human resources beyond capacity.

Our world is faced with violent persecution for human rights and devastating wars that have displaced people. Canada welcomes these people but does not have sufficient housing for people currently living in our communities. We are also threatened by an increase in natural disasters due to environmental issues and climate change that impact our lives, homes and food supply.

Everyone is battling the onslaught of world and life issues. Every day our resilience is tested. There’s a connection with the escalating need for mental health support along with substance and harm reduction. While employees may attend work, many are languishing and working below optimal performance. Are you tired, stressed, worried and at potential risk for burnout?

Experts had predicted that it will take years for full recovery from the pandemic’s lingering after-effects. Recent annual CEO surveys have positioned employee health and well-being among top priorities. Studies link employee well-being and resilience to a healthy corporate culture for creativity and innovation. Every Corporation is seeking solutions to support employees because this impacts the ability to serve clients and communities. Studies report that senior managers and the leadership team are also at risk because they tend to be over-engaged on a continual basis, and this negatively impacts performance.

Let’s switch gears and explore the challenges of corporate silos that were created in large Corporations to manage complexity. They are defined as business units or departments with specific expertise and functional responsibilities that operate with substantial independence, having their own leadership structure. They are often physically distanced and disconnected from other parts of the Corporation. Silos of departmental function, responsibilities and expertise lead to fragmented solutions.

Bomelburg and Gassmann (2024) published a chapter about how to overcome corporate silos in a book entitled: Collaborative Advantage. Simply stated, corporate transformation requires breaking down silos through collaboration that is enabled by change agents.

To drive best practices and innovation in service system design, Richard C. Larson published a commentary about “bridging the silos”. Successful strategies focus on humans (not only technology), and encourage across discipline research, diverse collaboration, and new partnerships.

To illustrate the concept of silos, let’s distill the complexity of corporate operations to a dual purpose:

to design and deliver high quality services (or products) at the lowest cost
to support the employees (people) who provide these services and products.

The department that focuses on innovation (or business transformation) drives the design and delivery of high quality services (or products) at the lowest cost. Two other departments provide support for people: human resources and occupational health. The challenge is connecting these silos (dots) because the health and well-being of people (Occupational Health) cannot be separated from corporate culture (Human Resources) or from service or product design and delivery (Innovation).

Consulting firms and other consultants tend to focus on only one of these three areas (i.e. employee health and well-being, or people and corporate culture, or innovation and business transformation). Cinder to Flame offers an integrated approach that addresses all three areas and connects the dots between corporate silos. Novel strategies and inventive tools support individual health and well-being while simultaneously building skills for inventive thinking and performance, to align people within the corporate culture for major innovation.

Cinder to Flame helps Corporations solve complex challenges with strategic services that energize people, fuel a healthy corporate culture and ignite major innovation.

Corporations often rely on their employees to boost their innovation culture (known as corporate entrepreneurship or intrapreneurship). Khan, Ameer and Bouncken et al (2023) studied corporate entrepreneurship in relation to green innovation that emphasized challenges of sustainability and resilience for corporate survival.

Cinder to Flame’s novel approach not only connects silos within a Corporation, it shatters the ceiling of corporate entrepreneurship by forging connections with external silos of knowledge, expertise and experience. A system of systems view transcends systems thinking when it augments opportunities to partner across public and private service and industry sectors to strengthen collective capacity for major innovation.

View Cinder to Flame’s copyrighted Venn diagram that illustrates connecting the dots between People, Health and Innovation: https://www.cindertoflame.ca

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