“Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.” ― Peter F. Drucker

An observation: when a company is riding high on a product curve, expanding rapidly enjoying a halo effect that seemingly filters out to new product domains, that’s when complacency enters the room.  Product Marketing, Content Management, AR/PR, Social, Inbound, all talking to each other, true interdepartmental collaboration yielding consistency and efficiency in effort right?  Well actually this is when the silo effect is ever present. Complacency.  Flush with cash and the excitement of exponential growth, we sit back a little more and we communicate a little less… due to the fact that the necessity of struggle is not present.  Life is good.

Interesting as I have seen this pattern emerge in a few organizations I have worked with and observed in many others over the years.

When things are good why look for cracks in the veneer? Why not make assumptions that new product introductions albeit late, will garner success rightly attributed and based on all else that has come before.

I argue, when things are good or really good, it’s time to conduct a situational analysis so as to help ensure a profitable future.

Which brings us back to silos best for storing grain and not a proper metaphoric vessel for ideas, creative, sharable assets. For example, why would a communications group that includes AR not be present in discussions with a content marketing group coalescing around the best artist representation for a segmented product offering? From an economy or efficiency perspective it makes sense to share assets. Yet how could the content group feel like they are on their own rather than sharing a resource in the AR personal.  Indeed silos are great for storage but not great for bidirectional communication of the interdepartmental variety.

Alignment of product, content, message and artist is a beautiful thing and when consistently executed a wonder for corporate branding. When high quality is the expectation across all domains then it’s time to really take a hard look at execution. It’s not about rocking the happy boat or bursting the silo bubbles, it’s about ensuring the very best delivery and, that’s in the meta sense, is always frame of mind.

In the end, a little self-critique is good for the soul especially when blinded by the light of diamonds.

Thanks for reading.