Brexit is a useful case study in how organizational structure shapes outcomes, regardless of which side of the debate you sit on. The decision process has played out across an enormous web of stakeholders: UK political parties, the core European Union team, individual member-state governments, residents of each member state, businesses operating across borders, and a press and social-media layer that amplifies opinion as if it were fact. The structural shape of that web, more than the merits of any argument, is what made the process so painful.
Conflict Is Not The Problem; The Structure Around It Is
Differing views are not inherently bad at work. Diverse perspectives are how teams generate better ideas. The challenge is how stakeholders are organized to channel those views into a decision. In the UK, you have multiple political parties, each itself fragmented into factions with diametrically opposed positions. The same fragmentation appears in member-state governments and within the EU team leading the negotiation. When the structure is built from silos within silos, even good-faith disagreement struggles to reach a usable conclusion.
This is the same dynamic that plays out in companies, just dressed in different clothes.
Silo Organizations: Slow, Risk-Averse, Quietly Fragile
Many organizations are still built as classic command-and-control silos. The pattern is familiar:
- Slow decisions. Approvals climb the chain and rarely come back down at the same speed.
- Stifled innovation. Perceived risk drives caution, and caution kills experimentation.
- Suppressed dissent. Staying under the radar is safer than challenging upwards, so the best information never reaches the people making the call.
- Cross-silo gridlock. Buy-in across functions is harder than buy-in within them, which is why enterprise initiatives stall.
Clients running this way can shift their mindsets, behaviors, and practices toward something better. That work is not just possible, it is often more joyful than the silo experience it replaces.
The Matrix Is Not The Answer Most People Think It Is
When organizations move away from pure silos, they typically reach for the matrix. The intent is to manage across functional and divisional lines without losing accountability. The reality is that a matrix is often a set of silos placed at 90-degree angles to one another, with the added complication that everyone has two managers. It can deliver some benefits, but it can also be as cumbersome as the silo structure it replaced.
Picture a minister with portfolio responsibility, navigating local constituents, a primary domain such as trade or healthcare, and the chaos of an EU-exit negotiation that touches both. That is a lot of complexity even for a well-functioning matrix. Multiply it across hundreds of decision-makers and the system clogs.
Self-Forming Teams And The Structure That Actually Performs
Leading organizations have moved past both silos and matrix structures. They empower people to take acceptable risk and work collaboratively in self-forming teams that come together, deliver, and disband around specific problems. This is often labeled the future of work, but for many high-performing organizations it is already the current reality.
The visible manifestations are familiar: open-plan offices, hot-desking, and remote work. The catch is that those surface practices only translate into different outcomes when paired with the right structure. Plenty of organizations adopt the trappings while leaving the underlying silo or matrix in place, and end up frustrated that the new ways of working never quite take.
What This Means For Leaders
The Brexit case raises a question worth carrying back into your own organization. Would you rather your toughest decisions be processed through fragmented silos, a complex matrix, or self-forming teams that prioritize candor, agility, and win-win outcomes for the stakeholders who matter? Three years of stalemate suggest that doing more of the same is unlikely to produce a different result.
The leadership job, whether at the head of a country or the head of a function, is to design the structure so the people inside it can do their best work. Get the structure right and conflict becomes a generator of better ideas. Get it wrong and even the most talented stakeholders end up locked in opposing trenches, mistaking activity for progress.