Why teams work in silos, and why an away day won’t fix it on its own.

Silos are rarely about personalities. Capable teams drift apart for practical reasons, and they come back together the same way.

Lucy McGibbonFounder and CEO, TeamscapesOctober 2026 · 5 min read

The ICENA team working across departments

In short

Silos usually grow from workload, distance and unclear priorities, not from people who won’t cooperate.
An away day can reconnect a team, but only if it ends with shared priorities the team built itself.
The real test is the weeks after: conversations need to keep crossing the old lines.

Every team says it wants to collaborate. And yet capable people, under pressure, naturally focus on their own work, their own targets and the colleagues they sit nearest to. Over time, that becomes a silo. Not because anyone decided it should, but because nobody decided otherwise.

How silos form

Busy people narrow their focus

When workloads are heavy, people protect their time. Cross-team conversations feel like a luxury, so they stop happening.

Priorities aren’t shared

If each part of the team has its own goals and no common picture of what matters most, people optimise for their own corner. It looks like a lack of teamwork, but it’s really a lack of shared direction.

Distance does the rest

Hybrid working, different sites or simply different meeting schedules mean people rarely see each other work. Assumptions fill the gap.

Why an away day isn’t enough

An away day can be a brilliant reset. ICENA’s team had spent a year working in silos and had a single day to regroup and plan the next five years. It worked because the day was focused on building shared priorities, not just on feeling closer.

It really felt like we were all one team together, and that just wouldn’t have been possible without Teamscapes.
Naomi Butters · CEO & Co-founder, ICENA

But the day is the start. Without something to carry it forward, the old patterns return as soon as the inbox fills up again.

What makes the change stick

Build the priorities together

People commit to what they’ve helped shape. Give the whole team a hand in agreeing what matters most, so everyone is working from the same picture.

Change how the conversations happen

Agree a few practical habits that cross the old lines: who talks to whom, when, and about what. Small, regular contact beats occasional big gestures.

Come back to it

Check in after a few weeks. What’s working? Where are the old walls creeping back? A short follow-up keeps the momentum the day created.

We didn’t have a lot of time, just the day, so Teamscapes were great at really focusing our conversation on what we wanted those priorities to be. We’ve had a lot more proactive, focused conversations since.
Naomi Butters · CEO & Co-founder, ICENA