Departments often have trouble working together to achieve common goals. The people in these different departments have been given objectives that sometimes conflict (marketing wants to improve quality; accounting wants to reduce costs). This is called the silo effect, and it can destroy a company. When something goes wrong in a business, many managers try to determine which department screwed up. Often it's a failure in how the company processes its products, services, and information.
Blaming a department manager is easy; fixing the system is much harder.
