It's amazing how minds jam up inside companies. Outside we're creative and energized. Inside, we keep to ourselves, afraid to open up.

Why?

Internal barriers are one of the biggest obstacles to organizational success and in today's fast-paced world, innovation is key. Lack of internal communication leads to stifling innovation. So what prevents the free-flow of information? What are the barriers that stand in our way?

1) Unified vision. Many companies start off with a bang, yet over the years they fail to adapt. Outdated vision statements, or no vision at all is what creates massive barriers to communicating freely inside an organization. Serving customers becomes more and more difficult if the customer base is changing. And, employees, fearful for their jobs, will do whatever they need to do to keep their jobs. Keeping their jobs becomes the focus, not helping customers or the company.

2) Management support. Visionary proclamations are fantastic, but if managers aren't 100% committed, barriers will arise. Ultimately, workers go along with their bosses, which may or may not cause friction with other departments inside a company. Employees may want to rise up and embrace change, but fail to do so because they fear disapproval, censorship, or worse.

3) Incentives. Even with a compelling vision, a culture of oneness must be created. All too often, money is used as the sole motivator. However, much more important is the ability to fail without reprisal. Spotlighting mistakes as failures drives independent thought deep underground. Employees will not open up and share information with others if they live in a world of fear. Incentives must be created to reward mistakes (or even outright failure) for those who take intelligent, well thought out risks. Without risk, there will be no reward.

Silo Mentality

In kindergarten we learned to share. Then we spent the rest of our life competing for the attention of others.

Bureaucratic culture rewards the opposite of what we learned in our formative years. We get rewarded for hoarding information. After all, information is power and he who has the gold makes the rules.

But, hoarding information saps the energy from departments as well as entire companies. Rocket engines need maximum calculated thrust to reach a certain objective at a certain time, yet leaky thrusters drain away the rocket's power and cause a hemorrhaging of resources. Same with any organization. Information must be shared. With sharing comes collaboration and maximum thrust.

It's time to work together, to achieve a shared vision. Customers deserve nothing but the best!