The Self-Destructive Habits of Good Companies: ...And How to Break Them

Chapter 8. The Territorial Impulse: Culture Conflicts and Turf Wars

As companies grow and become successful, they tend to organize themselves into what I call “functional silos.” Growing bigger still, they add “geographic silos”—regional offices or international operations. This organizational process is usually quite necessary. The freewheeling style of the founder/entrepreneur is fine in the company’s infancy, but successful growth requires rules, policies, and procedures. It requires organization. Organizing also entails a kind of breaking apart—into functions, divisions, units, regions, or whatever. What had been one, with a kind of organic, intuitive wholeness and health, now becomes many. Again, this is a rational and logical process as ...