In my time as an interim manager for a company, I witnessed firsthand how isolation and fragmentation hinder collaboration, innovation, and collective achievement. The marketing, sales, and customer service teams worked in silos, focusing solely on their individual tasks. Each team was “minding their own business,” disconnected from one another, and operating as if collaboration was someone else’s job.
To start addressing this, I called for a joint meeting with marketing and sales—just these two teams for now, as customer service claimed they were too busy. This wasn’t a meeting about a specific project or task but simply a chance for them to sit in the same room and interact.
I began the meeting with an unusual assignment: solve Duncker‘s Candle Problem.
The Candle Problem and the Assumption of Isolation
The Candle Problem, for those unfamiliar, is a classic challenge requiring creative thinking to solve. I handed out the problem individually to each person and waited. Minutes passed, and while I noticed them deep in thought, not one person looked at their neighbor or sought input from others.
When I asked for solutions, participants shyly offered their ideas one by one. I deliberately avoided confirming or denying their answers, leaving them in the dark. What struck me most wasn’t whether they solved the problem—it was the assumption underlying their approach: they all worked on it individually. No one had even considered asking their peers for help.
That moment was revealing for all of us. Their instinct to work alone wasn’t their fault. It’s a reflection of how we’ve been trained by our systems. Our educational system conditions us to solve problems individually—to prove our intellectual worth as separate entities. Collaboration isn’t rewarded in exams, so we don’t think to collaborate when challenges arise in the workplace.
When I pointed out that I never instructed them to work alone, the room shifted. Slowly, they started talking to one another, exchanging ideas and building on each other’s insights. The solution became secondary; what mattered was the realization that they didn’t have to solve the problem alone.
The Shift from Isolation to Collaboration
A few days later, I saw the results of this shift. It was Halloween, and the company wanted to promote themed offers on their website. Normally, marketing would handle this, but they lacked the tools to design something creative. Without collaboration, the solution would have been predictable—slap a discount on a product and call it a day.
But this time, something extraordinary happened. One team member with artistic skills drew Halloween-themed illustrations by hand. Another photographed and digitized them, and others integrated these into the website alongside the offers. The result was a fun, eye-catching campaign that was far better than what marketing alone could have achieved.
This simple act of working together unlocked a creative potential that had been stifled by their silos. More importantly, it strengthened their relationships. I started noticing the teams having lunch together, discussing not just work but life. The walls between them were coming down.
The Lesson: Breaking Silos Builds Shared Success
The Candle Problem wasn’t about testing their intelligence—it was about challenging their assumptions. It revealed how deeply ingrained the idea of individual problem-solving is, even in situations where collaboration is the better path. Once they saw the value of working together, they began to realize their collective greatness outweighed their individual achievements.
This experience taught me that breaking down silos requires more than just asking people to collaborate—it requires shifting their perspective. They need to see that life, like business, isn’t about solving problems alone. If we want to go far, we need to go together.
But here’s the challenge: the systems we operate in reward speed over collaboration, individual results over team success, and short-term gains over long-term impact. This is why fragmentation persists, whether horizontally, vertically, or between organizations. We’re incentivized to work fast and go alone.
A Choice for the Future
The crises we face today—climate change, inequality, resource scarcity—are the direct result of this mindset. They are what happens when we prioritize speed over sustainability, isolation over integration.
The choice before us is simple but profound:
- Do we want to continue going fast and alone, solving only short-term problems for individual gain?
- Or do we want to go far together, bridging silos, uniting across divisions, and building a sustainable, shared future?
If we choose the latter, we must learn to see our differences—functional, hierarchical, cultural, and systemic—not as barriers but as opportunities. By embracing collaboration and integrating diverse perspectives, we can unlock new possibilities and accomplish more than we ever could alone.
Because in the end, meaningful impact isn’t achieved in isolation. It’s built together.
