Want managers to stop managing silos? Find the factors that motivate them to act this way and get rid of them, and add new factors to their environment that will motivate them to collaborate. Dear Bob …I’m CIO for a mid-size company. I have a 125-person IT group reporting to me.From the way everyone behaves you’d think my head of application development was Bill Gates and the head of Operations was Larry Ellison. There is no trust at all, and they appear to be out to undermine each other more than they’re out to be successful at their own responsibilities. Worse, the attitude is contagious. The people reporting to them act just like they do. There’s no trust, no ability to collaborate … nothing except a lot of blaming, which seems to have become our core competency.I’ve tried lecturing, coaching, berating and arguing, and nothing seems to work.They really are two talented people and I don’t want to get rid of either of them. On the other hand, the situation isn’t sustainable. Any thoughts about what else I might try before firing one or both of them? – At wits endDear Witty …Before you do anything else, look at the situation you’ve put them in. Usually, when organizations turn into silos, it’s because goals, and any compensation tied to those goals, reinforces silo-oriented behavior. My guess is that you’ll find a lot of win/lose trade-offs. For example, if the budgeting process starts with a fixed pie and when one of them gets something it comes out of the other’s budget, it’s win/lose, which reinforces organizational rivalry. Result: Silos.Or, maybe Applications is counted as successful when projects finish on time no matter what, while Operations is counted as successful based on system stability and performance.Which means Applications has an incentive to skimp on software quality assurance, while Operations has an incentive to keep all new code out of production as long as possible. Result: Silos. While you’re looking at structural sources of moat-building, you should also figure out if any of their responsibilities require collaboration. Very likely, they don’t. Usually, organizational design starts by trying to draw clear boundaries between departments, to clarify who is responsible for what.The unintended consequence is that because managers have no reason to collaborate, they neither build the habit of doing so, nor see any reason to start.People do what they do for reasons. If you want them to do something different, take away the reasons they’re doing what they’re doing, and give them reasons to do something different. – Bob Technology Industry