4 key steps to breaking department silos and fuelling growth

This article comes from Sonal Mane’s insightful talk at our Los Angeles 2024 #GTM24 Summit. Check out her full presentation and the wealth of OnDemand resources waiting for you.

What’s the biggest hurdle standing between your team and real, scalable growth? Chances are, it’s not a lack of ideas, tools, or talent—it’s silos.

Growth doesn’t happen in isolation. Yet, in most organizations, product, marketing, and sales teams often operate like separate islands, each with its own goals, tools, and metrics. As someone who works at the intersection of these functions as VP of Global Growth Strategy and Go-to-Market at Databricks, I’ve seen firsthand how breaking these silos can unlock incredible potential.

In this article, I’ll share the lessons I’ve learned while fostering collaboration across teams, navigating the complexities of strategies like product-led growth (PLG) and sales-led growth (SLG), and creating alignment that drives measurable results.

Whether you’re looking to streamline your workflows, improve data integration, or better align your teams, the strategies I’ll discuss can help you tackle these challenges head-on.

So let’s dive into why breaking silos matters—and, more importantly, how to do it.

Why breaking silos matters

Let’s start with a simple question: why bother breaking silos in the first place? Wouldn’t it be easier to stick within our own lanes and focus on departmental goals? While that might feel more comfortable in the short term, the reality is that growth rarely comes from isolated efforts.

In most organizations, growth teams operate across functions by necessity. No single department—be it product, marketing, or sales—can drive growth alone. Instead, you need collaboration across teams.

The data backs this up: According to a McKinsey study, companies with strong cross-functional collaboration are 1.5 times more likely to outperform their competitors.

For us at Databricks, this principle has been key to achieving meaningful outcomes. When we’ve aligned our teams effectively, we’ve seen improvements in productivity and a greater ability to scale personalized experiences. That’s why breaking silos isn’t just a buzzword for me—it’s a critical strategy.