Breaking down silos: digital transformation’s greatest myth

‘Breaking down silos’ is certainly digital transformation’s most common phrase and myth. If you haven’t heard this phrase repeated over and over again, chances are your government hasn’t let you out of your house after the Covid-19 pandemic. It’s probably the biggest fable about transformation projects, be they digital or not. Some time ago, I delivered a presentation about the necessary cooperation between marketing and CIOs, which triggered an interesting piece in France’s leading economic newspaper, Les Echos. In this piece, the journalist reported that I was advocating the implementation of organisational silos to achieve better results. Obviously, he had completely misunderstood what I had said, unless I hadn’t made my point clearly enough. What I meant was that organisational silos couldn’t be broken down, that most of the time it served no purpose to even try and I further explained that intrapreneurship provides an interesting answer to this digital transformation dilemma. To top it all, it does produce far better results.  Why Breaking down silos is digital transformation’s greatest myth and how to overcome it Breaking down organisational silos. An old pipe dream. At the same time, silos are a ready-made excuse for those failing in their digital transformation endeavours – image produced with Midjourney. My presentation was highlighting that there is no point in breaking down silos to facilitate digital transformation. It can even be counterproductive. What I meant above all is that organisational silos are neither good nor bad. There are both good and bad things in them.  Silo-breaking is a great subject for after office hours pub discussions, that’s all. One had rather embrace intrapreneurship. Here is why. Breaking Down Organisational Silos: The Biggest Myth in Digital Transformation Intrapreneurs are like scrum halves in Rugby Union. There are short players but fast and agile. Intrapreneurs do not even attempt to break down silos, because they are too busy leading the pack and