Them and us - Whose fault is it?

For my Welsh Sport_The Conversation a range of experts share their thoughts on the future of sport in Wales.

Anne Adams-King, Chief Executive Officer at Welsh Cycling, believes banishing silos in organisations is key to developing a bright future for the sports sector. 

We often complain about a silo mentality and working in silos but are we all responsible for establishing and compounding this way of working?  We as a sector have a fragmented landscape of organisations which in most cases we cannot change, but within our own organisations we embed this culture by creating teams and departments that have different aims and who compete for resources, making internal and external collaboration limited unless it benefits those in each silo. It is very easy to slip into creating silos and then allow them to exist with different purposes or functions to the detriment of the overall organisation.

We accept that it is the role of the leaders to set the tone and values in their organisations, but they also need to understand the difference between leadership and management / delivery and that they should discourage a culture of teams who protect their own areas above that of the wider organisation.

As written by Patrick Lencioni in his book Silos, Politics and Turf Wars; “Silos – and the turf wars they enable – devastate organizations. They waste resources, kill productivity, and jeopardize the achievement of goals.” He goes on to advise leaders to tear down silos by moving past behavioural issues and address the contextual issues that are present at the heart of the organization. For many organizations, this means that not only do all employees of the company need to row in the same direction, but the executive teams must be engaged and at the forefront steering the boat. It is imperative that the leadership team agrees to a common and unified vision for the organization. There must be a large level of executive buy-in and core understanding of the company’s long-term goals, department objectives, and key initiatives within the leadership team prior to passing it down to the teams. A unified leadership team will encourage trust, create empowerment, and break managers out of the “my department” mentality and into the “our organization” mentality.

Whilst recognising that those who lead sport or are involved as volunteers or work in sport are by nature a competitive bunch of people, we all have the ability to banish the silos in our own organisations by asking: 

• what is our overriding purpose?
• what makes us relevant to the people already doing activity?
• who do we want to take up sport or physical recreation? 

Do our customers really pigeon hole themselves into a simple ‘community sport’ or ‘performance sport’ category or is there a more complex spectrum that people move along and dip in and out of? For instance, cyclists might commute to work, ride socially with friends and compete in events as a rider – all in the same week. Should we not be creating the right environment for everyone to take part, rather than creating artificial silos and then complaining that people don’t collaborate?

So let’s get rid of the ‘them and us’ and ‘it’s not my job attitude’ by:

•        Creating a common purpose of getting more people into sport and physical recreation
•        Being clear which internal and external relationships will help achieve that purpose
•        Providing motivation and incentives to people to work together
•         Creating an open minded culture

Anne Adams-King

The Welsh version of this thought piece can be read here. 

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Sport Wales has launched 'My Welsh Sport _ The Conversation', an opportunity for everyone in Wales to give their view on Wales's sporting future.

For more information and to give your views visit www.mywelshsport.wales