Last week, I talked about <a href="https://boagworld.com/emails/engaging-stakeholders-in-ux-activities/">getting stakeholders actively involved in UX activities</a> like research sessions and workshops. That engagement is brilliant for building empathy and support, but it only takes you so far if everyone retreats back to their own departmental bubble afterward.This week, I want to focus on something that will amplify all that good work: breaking down the silos that keep teams isolated from one another.<h2>Why silos are killing your UX efforts</h2>In most organizations, different teams work in their own little worlds. Developers, marketers, product owners, business analysts; they all contribute to and impact the user experience, but they rarely talk to each other beyond handoffs and status updates.This creates two problems for you as a UX leader.First, it causes friction in the user experience itself. When users move from one part of your product or service to another, they're effectively moving between teams. If those teams don't collaborate, users literally fall between the gaps.I've seen this happen over and over. The sales team promises one thing, but another department doesn't deliver it. Or a customer goes through a complaints process and gets a resolution, but that information never reaches finance, who keeps invoicing them anyway. Users get caught in the crossfire of departments that aren't talking to each other.These breakdowns aren't just annoying. They damage trust, create support overhead, and drive customers away. And from a UX perspective, you can have the most beautiful interface in the world, but if the experience breaks down because departments aren't aligned, none of that matters.The second area is much simpler. Your ability to change the culture will be limited by which teams you can access and influence. If you're stuck in one silo, your impact stays trapped there too.<h2>The benefits of breaking out</h2>When you start collaborating across departmental lines, good things happen.You plug the gaps in the user experience. When teams work together, you can identify and fix those places where users fall through the cracks. Sales and delivery get aligned. Support issues get fed back to the teams who can fix them. Information flows across departmental boundaries instead of stopping at them.You gain better business insights. You'll understand how UX affects different parts of the organization and what motivates other teams. That knowledge helps you frame UX in ways that matter to them.You build cross-departmental UX advocacy. When other teams see how UX helps them achieve their goals, they become advocates. That momentum spreads much faster than anything you could do alone.You increase your team's influence. As you collaborate and demonstrate value, you become essential to strategy and decision-making across departments, not just within your own corner.You streamline processes. Collaboration helps you integrate UX into different workflows and ensure those processes work better together. You deliver results faster and remove false assumptions people have about UX being slow or impractical.<h2>Which teams to prioritize</h2>You can't be everywhere at once, especially early on. Focus your energy on four groups that will give you the biggest return.Sales and marketing feel the impact of poor user experience most directly. If you help them improve conversion rates, average order values, or lead quality, you'll be improving the metrics that senior management actually cares about. Everyone wants to make more money, and this is your most direct path to those conversations.Customer support cares deeply about retention. It's much more expensive to win a new customer than keep an existing one, so reducing churn matters. Work with support to identify where UX improvements can reduce complaints and improve retention. They're usually quite receptive because better UX makes their job easier.Development has a huge impact on user experience through performance, security, and technical implementation. They're often frustrated by bottlenecks from design teams, so working with them improves the relationship and streamlines handoffs. You can also empower developers to handle some of the more routine UX work themselves.Business analysts (if your organization has them) evaluate potential projects and opportunities. They understand the importance of user acceptance, but they often don't feel equipped to assess it. If you can help them evaluate projects from a user perspective, you become invaluable to their process.<h2>How to start breaking down walls</h2>Look, let me breakdown in what has worked for me.Conduct stakeholder interviews. Book casual chats with representatives from these departments. Ask about their challenges and explore ways your team can support them. This shows genuine interest and positions you as someone looking to help, not looking for help. That's powerful.Offer resources. Provide tools, time, and advice to help them overcome challenges. Give before you ask. It builds trust much faster than any formal presentation ever will.Run exchange programs. Suggest shadowing each other for a day or swapping team members for a week. Yes, it's an investment, but understanding each other's roles transforms how you work together.Collaborate on standards. When you're setting standards for accessibility, content, or research methods, engage other departments in creating them. They'll have valuable input, the standards will work better for everyone, and people are much more likely to follow standards they helped create.Prototype together. Get different people in a room (a developer, a marketer, you) and just create something collaboratively. Free from normal constraints, working toward a shared vision. It's rewarding and it breaks down barriers fast.<h2>One more tip</h2>If you possibly can, suggest that your UX team becomes its own center of excellence, independent from any existing business silo. It eliminates the perception that you're only responsible for one area and recognizes that user experience affects every part of the organization.It's not always possible, and if it isn't, don't worry. But it's worth raising the conversation.<h2>Next week</h2>So far in this series, I've focused on building relationships and demonstrating value internally. But sometimes the most powerful way to build credibility inside your organization is to bring in validation from outside.Next week, I'll talk about using external benchmarking, industry recognition, and expert voices to reinforce your position and give your recommendations extra weight. It's a tactic I've used more times than I can count, and it works remarkably well.

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