In our professional environments, it’s almost always better to cooperate with other teams at your own expense, even when they’re a bunch of knuckleheads.
Teams that don’t cooperate together are organizational silos, and they’re expensive.
Although they help teams focus on specific areas, they block other teams from accessing important resources which creates enormous bottlenecks in the group’s ability to deliver value.
Bureaucracy at its best.
In this post, I want to reintroduce how the Prisoner’s Dilemma – a game theory concept – can help us crush the barriers created by silos.
Let’s dive in!
The Prisoner’s Dilemma
Cooperating with others is like a group project:
- Will everyone contribute equally?
- Will recognition go to the right people?
- Does everyone agree on what needs to get done and how to do it?
Every team has limited resources. Helping others means you aren’t investing 100% back into your own initiatives, which is risky.
Especially when there isn’t an obvious priority.
If no one can point to something concrete to figure out what the Most Important Thing is, teams usually opt to focus on themselves. This strengthens existing silos and increases the divide between teams.
It’s a classic case of the Prisoner’s Dilemma.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains the concept as follows:
Two people are arrested for a crime and placed in separate cells. The prosecutor separately offers both of them the following deal:
- If both of you admit guilt, you’ll both get 5 years
- If one of you confesses and the other remains silent, the betrayer will be set free and the other will serve 10 years
- If you both remain silent, you’ll both serve 1 year
Game theory says it is always in your interest to admit guilt. Even if you end up serving time, it’s worth it because the penalty for remaining silent if your partner confesses is too high.
The dominant strategy is to act in your own interest – confess – instead of cooperating (both remaining silent), despite the outcomes. You’ll end up serving 5 years because you don’t trust each other to behave.
In the workplace, these interactions happen in projects and budgets instead of prison cells but they follow the same path. If you decide to help out a team and they don’t contribute, you’ll resent them and any future cooperation becomes far less likely. It feels safer to stay in your silo:
- If all teams refuse to cooperate, work is duplicated and takes much longer
- If one agrees, and no one helps, the uncooperative teams get all the credit without putting forth any effort, the cooperative team grows resentful, and the work takes a long time to complete
- If both cooperate, trust grows and the work is delivered with high efficiency
Corporate culture has a long and spiteful memory.
There are a few ways to overcome the temptation to “confess”:
1. Identify shared priorities
You need something that shouts, “No matter what team you’re on, this initiative comes first!”
The prisoners would have stayed silent if they had started the job with an agreed-upon goal. Without a clear goal, teams are left to their own devices and make up their own priorities.
Teams cooperate better with a highly incentivized, clear, short list of top priorities.
Too many “priorities” causes the effect to wear off and teams naturally retreat back to their silos. Navigating a long list of priorities is too hard.
Keep it simple and clear.
2. Build a specific communication strategy
A clear list of priorities doesn’t help if no one knows about it.
Communication is an important tool for organizations to avoid Prisoner Dilemmas. Like any healthy relationship, all parties need to be in constant contact to survive.
And it has to be more than emails.
Teams have people of different generations, backgrounds, and skill sets. It’s not good enough to assume a regular in-person meeting will bridge the gap between silos. The variety of tools and messaging styles we have available calls for us to adapt them to the natures of our teams.
Figure out a working agreement for a shared effort that meets the unique needs of the entire group.
3. Frequently share information
Silent valleys between silos are risky.
When teams stop communicating with each other, they’re far more likely to duplicate work or diverge from a shared strategy. Frequent communication builds trust, and trust is speed.
Keep the conversation alive between teams with a variety of information-swapping channels:
- Meaningful meetings
- A shared chat channel
- Recognition and celebrations
- Reorganize departments into one group
- Lunch (noted by David Ogilvy as a powerful way to build friends from enemies)
Don’t be a prisoner. Overcoming the temptations of isolated work unlocks a greater potential for your team to make a bigger impact.