Breaking Down Traditional Silos to Crack the Code for Growth
Key Highlights
- Silos between marketing and talent teams have historically hindered cohesive messaging and strategy alignment.
- Digital transparency and AI tools make it essential for organizations to unify internal and external brand narratives.
- Leadership support and mindset shifts are crucial for breaking down organizational silos and fostering collaboration.
- Unified brand and talent strategies improve trust, reputation and ultimately drive business growth.
Historically speaking, marketing and talent teams have often operated in isolation. While the former focused on creating demand generation, brand awareness and market growth, the latter needed to center its efforts on building a company culture and hiring and retaining top talent. But with much of audiences now interacting with brands online in various digital spaces, the game has changed.
“There’s such transparency now with all of these tools and now especially with AI,” says Lisa Namm, director of brand and public relations at LBMC. “Our employees, candidates and buyers are now seeing the same content. The same leadership posts, the same Glassdoor reviews, media coverage. With AI search optimization, they don’t decipher corporate branding versus employee/employer branding.”
That, she says, creates a very discoverable risk for organizations.
Where the Silos Formed
With the focus on different objectives and metrics, it’s no wonder silos rapidly formed between these two critical organizational functions. Marketing was solely focused on external growth, according to Namm, while HR and talent concentrated on internal stability, so they often worked in parallel with little shared ownership in messaging or strategy.
“That doesn’t work anymore,” says Namm. “Everything has changed, and if you didn’t change your focus or your mindset, you became even more siloed. This can show up first with messaging, when the firm is saying something externally versus what the employees are experiencing internally.”
As a brand leader, Namm says these silos are a byproduct of what’s been going on in society at large, and they affect all organizations, no matter the size or function. At the end of the day, the problems stem from a corporate mindset that may need some convincing to change from the top down.
The key approach is to remove defensive attitudes between departments and encourage teams to collaborate around shared messaging and outcomes.
Breaking Down the Misalignment
Taking down organizational silos is primarily a leadership and mindset challenge rather than a structural one, according to Namm. Giving her own organization, LBMC, as an example, she says that executive leadership and shareholders who actively support stronger collaboration between brand and talent teams should position such shifts as responses to changing market realities.
“It starts with the ownership,” says Namm. “You previously had this strategy, and that strategy. So the talent initiatives were working separately from what the brand initiatives were saying.
“But your buyers are going to feel it first. No matter what company you have, your buyers are the most important place where inconsistencies show up. They feel it long before leadership does,” says Namm.
The key approach is to remove defensive attitudes between departments and encourage teams to collaborate around shared messaging and outcomes. At LBMC, executive support for efforts such as LinkedIn workshops for personal branding and HR learning and development programs has built a culture that doesn’t mandate what to express or post, but offers the tools and support to enable employee participation.
The Business Impact
“One of the biggest things we found was that we had really eager leadership,” says Namm. “We had buy-in at the top, which was vital. It wasn’t an ‘HR needs help’ or ‘marketing needs to come in’ type of demand.”
Namm says her organization really came together, asking questions to help determine the best path forward, such as:
- How can we evolve to come together as a cohesive unit?
- How can we help each other in this changing market culture?
- Who are our buyers trusting today?
- Are we consistent out in the marketplace?
At the end of the day, says Namm, brand and talent teams are serving the same humans, just at different places and in different moments when they’re looking. Instead of thinking about an individual team’s metrics or marketing and PR versus human resources, think about just who is searching online for your company. Will a potential customer who comes across negative Glassdoor reviews want to work with that business, even if theoretically Glassdoor reviews should be unrelated to a final product? Should a top-tier executive candidate want to work for a company whose buyers are fleeing to others for some reason or another?
“You need to break the silos so you can build that trust from the inside out, and the revenue comes after that,” says Namm. “They ultimately do the speaking for you. Your clients become your top referral because they’re seeing your consistency. Your talent refers more talent, and so forth. They tell our story for us.”
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About the Author
Raissa Rocha
Contributor
Raissa Rocha is Director of Custom Content, Content Studio at EndeavorB2B and has extensive B2B experience in editorial, custom media, sponsored content and marketing solutions. At EB2B she manages content development across all of Endeavor’s markets, working with brand teams and the SME network to produce high-quality, engaging content for clients. Previously Raissa served as Director of Nimble Thinkers, the in-house marketing agency at Scranton Gillette Communications, which was acquired by Endeavor in 2024. At Nimble, Raissa managed the agency’s operations and top clients, ideating and pitching campaign proposals as well as project managing all aspects of client programs from storyboarding and planning to execution and reporting.
A former editor, Raissa was part of the 2014 Neal Award-winning team at Building Design+Construction prior to moving over into marketing. She has worked on several association publications, including stints as managing editor for Chicago Architect, the official publication of AIA Chicago, and Environmental Connection, the magazine of the International Erosion Control Association. In addition to over a decade of B2B editorial and marketing experience in the residential and commercial construction industry, Raissa has worked in a variety of markets including horticulture, water and wastewater, infrastructure, health information technology, lighting and more.
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