The traditional organizational chart is a barrier to AI execution.
Recently I’ve been writing about seven organisational shifts as a result of AI.
Shift #1: AI Demands a Truly Strategic PMO.
Shift #2: Strategy Leadership when the End is Unknown.
Shift #3: AI strategy is emotional, not technical.
This week, we move onto workforce shift #4: How AI-driven strategies threaten traditional siloes. While we still design companies around fixed teams like Finance, HR, and Operations, AI-driven work doesn’t stay within those lines. When strategy flows horizontally and authority is vertical, the friction we already have between some teams is accelerated. This destroys change momentum.
Successful execution depends on how quickly you can move from managing “siloes” to managing implementation of new workflows and other cross-functional initiatives.
Consider a firm that wants to use AI to qualify marketing opportunities (sanitised real project of mine). Marketing has the data and their own specialised expertise, Technology provides the tool, Finance determines the margin profiles, and the People team is finalising AI-First culture guidelines. The firm was trying to set up a cross-functional workflow with siloed decision-makers who were used to putting their own team needs ahead of this whole-of-business initiative, viewing it as a Marketing priority. We had to rethink how the teams worked together to regain speed.
You are not only managing strategy execution. You are managing the conditions in which execution happens.
Let’s look at three practical moves.
3 tips to Fix Friction across Siloes
1. Build shared purpose
Encourage each manager responsible for a different function to identify more with the overall firm-wide purpose and priorities, rather than their own team. For some organisations this is a big cultural challenge.
2. Invite selected people to cross-functional initiatives
Invite selected high-performing, adaptable people to join high-priority cross-functional initiatives, and reward them accordingly. This is not the same as intermittent co-design: it is a much deeper way of getting high-priority work done. I have a module on this in The Turbochargers Hub: ask me.
3. Use the executive agenda to bridge gaps
Silos persist because they are rarely challenged at the top. Make cross-functional workflow health a standing item on your leadership meetings to signal that horizontal cooperation is a strategic priority. When executive leaders visibly track the progress of these shared paths, it forces managers to resolve disputes faster and stay aligned.
Shift #1: AI Demands a Truly Strategic PMO.
Shift #2: Strategy Leadership when the End is Unknown.
Shift #3: AI strategy is emotional, not technical.
Shift #4: AI-Driven Strategies Break Traditional Siloes
Next week, we move on to workforce shift #5.
“The bottleneck is at the top of the bottle.”
The legendary Peter Drucker
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About Lisa Carlin
Lisa Carlin is a Strategy Execution Specialist. Most of my work is guiding transformation leaders in B2B Tech and Knowledge Services to design and implement strategic AI programs that deliver tangible results at scale. I accelerate strategy with Culture Intelligence and AI.
Lisa is author of the globally acclaimed newsletter, Turbocharge Weekly, read by 8,000 business leaders.
Lisa’s career includes roles at McKinsey and Accenture, then running her own business since 1999. Over this time she has delivered over 50 implementations with a 96% success rate.