Blog by Jessica MacLeod: “…To help public sector leaders navigate these cultural barriers, I use a simple but powerful framework: Clarity, Care, and Challenge. It’s built from research, experience, and what I’ve seen actually shift how teams work. You can read more about the framework in my previous article on high-performing teams. Here’s how this framework relates to breaking down silos:
- Clarity → How We Work:
Clear priorities, aligned expectations, and a shared understanding of how individual work connects to the bigger picture. - Care → How We Relate:
Trust, psychological safety, and strong collaboration. - Challenge → How We Achieve:
Stretch goals, high standards, and a culture that encourages innovation and growth.
Silos thrive in ambiguity. If no one can see the work, understand the language, or map who owns what, collaboration dies on arrival.
When I work with public sector teams, one of the first things I look for is how visible the work is. Can people across departments explain where things stand on a project today? Or what the context is behind a project? Do they know who’s accountable? Can they locate the latest draft of the work without digging through three email chains?
Often, the answer is no, and it’s not because people aren’t trying. It’s because our systems are optimized for siloed visibility, not shared clarity.
Here’s what that looks like in practice:
- A particular acronym means one thing to IT, another to leadership, and something entirely different to community stakeholders.
- “Launch” for one team means public announcement. For another, it means testing a feature with a pilot group.
- Documents live in private folders, on individual desktops, or in tools that don’t talk to each other…(More)”.