4 Strategies for Fighting the Silo Mentality In Your Church

Let’s talk about silos.

They are cool on the horizon and everyone who watches that show Fixer Upper seems to love them but in ministry and in organizations…not so good.

What do I mean by the silo mentality?

It’s when individual departments, teams or ministries focus more on themselves than they do on the organization as a whole. Most churches or organizations that I’ve been a part of are more siloed (is that even a word?!?) than not. In fact, the only place where silos have not been the rule is where I am now, and only over the last five years or so.

Two things I’ve learned about fighting silos.

First, it takes vigilance and effort. Second, it is worth the fight.

So, what I’d like to do in this post is share four strategies for fighting the silo mentality in your church or organization.

1. Unified Vision

My boss is a man of mantras.

If he was a superhero he would definitely be called Mantra Man.

He begins each senior level staff meeting with the same opening statement. It’s kind of funny except for the part where I now have his opening statement memorized.

Now that I think about it...I may be brainwashed.

Like a good kind of brainwashed.

What do they even call that?

Anyway, I guess Mantra Man is actually brilliant.

Back to this post on silos.

Part of his opening statement goes like this:

One team. One plan.

Everyone on our staff knows what the plan is, at least at the basic level.

Why?

Because we talk about it all the stinking time.

Also, because we’ve done the hard work of aligning our individual mission statements and the practices that flow out of our mission statements.

I remember when I first started meeting with my new boss and he asked me what my ministry’s mission statement was.

I shared it with him and then he asked,

How does that integrate with what we are doing as an overall church?

It wasn’t a throw away question.

It led to three months of thinking and shifting to bring alignment.

These sorts of conversations happen at every level and in every department.

The result is that, for the most part, all of our ministries are running in the same direction.

Why?

Because…One team. One plan.

So, if you’re interested in fighting the silo mentality in your church or organization, the work will start with a unified vision and then aligning everyone and everything with that vision.

It takes time.

It requires constant realignments even after you get it right, but it is worth it.

2. Culture Screening

As a student pastor, I’ve run into this conversation over and over and over again at conferences, retreats and collaborative events:

I love my ministry but I do not love the church I’m working at.

I’ve been there myself.

Here’s the problem. This attitude is the fuel that feeds the silo mentality.

How do you fight this?

Well, it starts with hiring.

In the last few years, we have introduced an additional layer to our hiring process. It’s called a culture interview.

First, we took the time to study our culture, understand it and create language that captures the essence of our culture.

Then, we crafted interview questions to decipher whether a potential hire fits our overall culture.

Here’s how this is really annoying: Our hiring process takes longer and it’s a pretty regular thing for me or someone else to push forward a candidate that we think would be a good fit for our particular team only to discover he or she is a poor fit for our overall church culture.

Annoying.

Here’s how this is really great: We are building a staff team who believes deeply in and resonates with the values and culture of the overall church and I can’t tell you how invaluable that is!

It leads to great longevity, health, unity and a huge reduction in the silo mentality.

So, if you’re serious about fighting silos on your staff, I recommend taking the time to understand and articulate your culture and then add a culture screen to your hiring process.

3. Silo Field Trips

One very practical way to fight silos is through relationships.

The truth is that silos often exist because of mistrust and misunderstanding.

A while ago, my team realized that we weren’t exactly playing nice with a few other departments in our church.

There was a lot of complaining and “those people” type of comments.

So, what we decided to do was go on a field trip to every other department.

We came to them with coffee and baked goods and asked them a series of questions:

What is one thing you wish every other ministry understood about what you do?

What are some things that we do that create stress for you and your team?

What is one thing you are really excited about right now?

What could we do to make your lives easier?

These field trips helped build relationships and trust.

We came to see how we were inadvertently creating stress and we also came to value other departments more as we came to understand their values.

If you want to fight the silo mentality in your church or organization, it may be time for silo field trips.

4. Collaboration

My last strategy is plagiarized from every “teamwork” movie ever.

You can choose from any of the following options:

• Remember the Titans
• Any of the Avenger movies
• The Lord of the Rings
• Cool Runnings (such a classic!)

The idea here is pretty obvious: teamwork and collaboration.

If you are struggling with a silo mentality in your church or organization, it might be time for a few cross-departmental projects.

Put people who are normally isolated from one another on the same team to solve a problem or create something new.

The beauty of this strategy is that people often begin to see themselves as members of the larger team instead of just members of their silo.

Wrap Up

There you go.

Four strategies to help fight the silo mentality in your church or organization.

This list is by no means exhaustive. I’m sure you have discovered a few effective strategies of your own.

We’d love to hear about them in the comments below.