What Kind of Salad Dressing is Your Company?

That was kind of a trick question. It should actually be “If you think your company is a Salad Dressing Company, are you in fact fooling yourself?

Okay, now let me take you down my way of analogizing this concept. What is salad dressing but a mix of a few things, oil, vinegar, some spices, but let’s think about the oil and vinegar, mainly.

Here’s a picture of “salad dressing” in its, let’s say – “collaborative state”. In picture 2 you might say this dressing is so “siloed” that it is not really a salad dressing. It’s just the parts that can, under the right conditions, form salad dressing.

Is your company more than an accumulation of siloed services or job functions? Are you really the company that you think you are? Or are you more the potential to become the company you think, mistakenly, you are. Are you a multiple set of Oils and Vinegars or are you the collaborative mix that’s fit to the purpose.

At zu, we lead companies in Design Thinking, a type of collaboration that is long on listening and communication with the cross-functional teams for whom this particular innovation project will touch. This is the shaking action that makes the outcome a “whole company” solution. This proper shaking is why our projects succeed where others seem to fail: they didn’t start with collaboration properly accomplished.

Software projects, as well as any projects which require innovation, or widespread change across an organization need the participants—stakeholders, employers, users, whatever you want to call the whole lot—to become Salad Dressing at the beginning, middle and end, so that the initial direction, the path forward and the tools created have addressed the siloed ingredients as one system, producing something that that is a greater whole.

Whatever the point is of your company or organization—whatever conversion factor defines your success—better collaborating companies are likely to out-evolve and out-perform you. Getting the most out of your organization’s unique groups involves making them into a cohesive decision making entity. To let the metaphors run free: Are you herding cats when you think you’re racing a sled-dog team?

Our Design Practice team has assisted companies tackle all manner of for profit and not-for-profit software system re-designs, change management challenges following mergers, consolidation of health regions into one internet presence, and so forth. Our approach worked because we took the challenge to the group, not its departmentally focussed parts. Silencing the silos and flattening the hierarchies gave rise to a team mindset of understanding each others’ challenges, bringing the group to common ground and purpose. Whether that’s to coalesce into a new vision of your organization or version of your offering, (or to flavour a salad), it is a proven approach.

(Also, please eat your salad.)