Time and time again, as we talk with nonprofit employees, one of the most significant pain points we hear concerns internal silos. Organizations, big and small, can suffer from a lack of collaboration. That lack of collaboration leads to various teams creating their own SOPs and forgetting the organization's overall goal as they go about their day-to-day tasks.
Yes, it is essential to find a system that works for you. However, when those systems don't reach across the organization, it is detrimental to your nonprofit's mission.
Based on the numerous successful implementations we've completed and the ongoing support we provide our clients, we have much experience helping with internal silos. We pulled together proven tactics that help nonprofits avoid (or overcome) pesky silos.
1. Stop, Collaborate, and Listen (but really it should be Stop, Listen, and Collaborate)
When you have a meeting of the minds, your teams can reset and get back to basics- your overall organization-wide goal. During this session, it is imperative to take a step back, listen to each group's needs, and collaborate on a unified plan.
2. Manage the Changes and Communicate Often
After you've worked out this new unified plan, it may take some time for the process to stick.
At StratusLIVE, we believe change can be a competitive advantage for our customers. We built out our Organizational Change Management (OCM) strategies to leverage said processes. Did you know that according to the U.S. Department of Labor, staff productivity decreases up to 75% during unmanaged change? Change management is an approach to systemically shift individuals, teams, and organizations from a current state to a desired future state while mitigating productivity loss during the transition, creating the environment for sustained change, and realizing the benefits of change more quickly. Check out our blog on Effective Change Management Practices to learn more.
Ultimately, as your teams experience the phases of change, leaders need to tailor their communication styles to help their teams move through the phases quickly.
3. Bring the teams together
By implementing (and using) collaboration software, these interconnected teams will interact and work together.
We recommend Microsoft Teams to our clients since StratusLIVE 365 Nonprofit CRM fully integrates with all things Microsoft. With that connection, we built a new nonprofit Teams taxonomy within Microsoft Teams so our clients can organize their departmental team members around common channels and functions while interacting with all aspects of their donor data. Ultimately, having a standard best practice in communication means that everyone can collaborate on the unified plan from Step 1 and effortlessly feel connected.
