Microcultures: Why Teams in the Same Company Can Feel Worlds Apart

Did you know that most medium to large-size businesses suffer from some level of workplace culture disparity? These cultural gaps can arise due to inconsistencies in departmental norms, values, and standard operating procedures. It's surprising how dramatically culture can differ between teams, even within the same office space. Understanding how and why this happens is important, not only from an employee wellbeing perspective, but also from a productivity, efficiency, and leadership point of view. At their core, these cultural gaps or microcultures are the result of a lack of departmental leadership and management alignment. Which is to say, the issue starts at the top and works its way down the food chain, wreaking havoc and misalignment throughout the organization.  

How Do Teams in the Same Company Feel So Different?

Work silos develop when departments operate mostly independent of each other and without an overarching culture or standard operating procedures. Siloed teams are led by one of two types of team leaders. The first type are those who overtly position themselves as authority figures and gatekeepers of what they perceive to be the right approach. The second type are leaders who flex no authority but instead allow their team to operate with complete autonomy, often resulting in operational inconsistencies and misalignment with the broader company goals.

Other factors can exacerbate work silos, and thus, cultural fragmentation. Departments that are disconnected either physically or organizationally (or both) from the rest of the company often struggle with a sense of belonging and shared culture. Poor cross-departmental communication can also contribute to misalignment and alienation. And now more than ever, remote work disparities can play an enormous role in a lack of cultural connection and personal wellbeing.

Why Fragmentation Is So Dangerous

While you want your employees to feel a certain level of autonomy and freewill, microcultures can be alienating to your team, undermining to your culture, and damaging to your bottom line. Work silos often lead to cultural fragmentation, which can have chilling effects on productivity, efficiency, and innovation. Beyond the negative operational outcomes, companies plagued by cultural fragmentation also risk employee dissatisfaction and greater turnover.

The reasons are simple. Employees want to feel connected to their peers, leadership, and the organization. This connection gives them a sense of belonging and boosts performance. When those ties are fragmented or misaligned, team members often become disengaged, or perhaps even worse, departments can take on a defiant “us against them” approach to workplace dynamics. When departments compete against - rather than support - each other, employee satisfaction, engagement, and sense of personal wellbeing can plummet. And when that happens, everybody loses.

• Disengaged employees cost companies between $459 and $550 billion per year. (ISS Group)
• Knowledge workers spend nearly 29% of their workweek (approximately 11.6 hours) searching for necessary information due to data silos. (VentureBeat)
• Aberdeen estimates that siloed contact center agents spend almost 15% of their day trying to find information, and a 200-agent contact center loses $1.5 million annually to these collaboration hurdles alone. (Customer Think)

Microcultures and silos don’t just affect employees and morale, they can also have a profound impact on customer satisfaction. From a customer experience (CX) perspective, teams who lack allegiance to the company’s messaging, level of service, or sales approach weaken the brand and undermine customer trust. This can lead to customer churn and a compromised reputation in the marketplace.

Microcultures Can Be a Good Thing Too

It is probably important to note that microcultures can actually have positive effects on an organization. A sense of belonging to a close-knit team or department can spur some remarkable outcomes within, like increased collaboration, stronger employee engagement, and more innovative ideas.

The problem arises when that connectedness leads to work silos, exclusion, and misalignment with company values. When a department's performance and standard operations are based on a different set of rules and values than the rest of the organization, there is often a breakdown in company-wide culture. Now imagine if yours is an enterprise business with multiple silos each acting independently of the expected organizational norms. What you’ve got is your own version of the Wild West. And no business owner wants that.

How to Build Connection & Alignment in Your Teams

While microcultures are natural and some level of fragmentation is common, silos ultimately threaten the health and productivity of an organization. The most effective line of defense against the negative impacts of fragmentation is a strong, aligned leadership team who models company values and successfully influences their teams to do the same. Leadership development and management training are launching pads for the compliance, culture, and connectedness of the business.

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To address and reverse the damaging effects of cultural fragmentation and microcultures, business leaders should consider the four following approaches:

1. Open Up Lines of Communication. This means establishing clear, insightful, and encouraging messaging from leadership and across departments. Gather the team for all-hands meetings, schedule town halls, regularly reinforce the company vision and purpose. Keep an open-door policy or regular opportunities for one-on-ones.

2. Build a Positive Culture But Don’t Force Uniformity. The core value of your business should be clear so that employees can connect with them. But strict allegiance to every detail of cultural expectations may be extreme. Allowing for individuality reinforces your employees’ sense of agency. Allow for microcultural nuances when you can, as long as those values and actions don’t infringe on the established company culture.

3. Develop Your Leaders at Every Level. Leadership development is not a one-size fits all. At the ownership or executive tier, leadership development might best be addressed at the peer advisory board level. Members of these mastermind groups elevate and inform each other in how to best lead their businesses and teams. Interested in joining a TAB business owner advisory board?

The next tier of leadership development is ensuring your entire leadership team is properly identified, aligned, and empowered to support the long-term goals of the business. Then you train leaders to be cultural ambassadors who promote cross-departmental collaboration and company-wide cohesion.

Next consider training your management team. While managers are more implementors and compliance monitors than strategy generators, they are likely the most visible models of cultural compliance. So teach your management team to promote not just productivity, but also teamwork, positive communication, and interdepartmental collaboration.

4. Create Cross-Functional Programs. Offer “field trips” for members of one department to shadow employees from another department or let them sit in on a different team's strategic meetings if it makes sense to do so. When you can, implement opportunities for collaboration between teams that might not otherwise interact. Perhaps have IT and Marketing collaborate to create both better branding and security on the company website. Or have HR and Finance generate more appealing compensation and benefits packages. The point is, cross-functional programs create connection.

Aligned Leadership & Collaborative Culture Are a Winning Combo

Microcultures are a natural phenomenon in the workplace, but left unchecked fragmentation and work silos can damage a business on multiple levels. The first step to resolving these issues is recognizing they exist. From there, it is leadership’s job to cultivate alignment, invest in developing its people, and ultimately ensure that the business thrives as a whole.