The Invisible Glue Holding Your Business Together

The Familiar Departments

You all know the typical business departments: IT, HR, Finance, Leadership, Marketing etc. etc. They’re often called the lifeblood of a company, and for good reason. Each one has a leader, a budget, and its own set of goals. If they don’t run well, the business doesn’t run well.

But here’s the problem: focusing only on those departments is a pretty limited way to think about how a business actually works. I’m not saying you should tear them down or start fresh. That’s not realistic, and it’s not the point. What I am saying is that there’s something just as important that doesn’t always get the spotlight: the invisible glue that holds all those departments together.

The Invisible Glue

Almost everything we implement with our clients eventually impacts their departments, but usually by strengthening the connections between them rather than acting directly inside a department. I'm calling these systems and habits that connect them "the invisible glue".

Think about it:

• Communication – How does your organization actually talk to itself? Not just within a department, but across them. Are people in Finance and Marketing on the same page, or are they working in parallel universes?
• Collaboration – When you need a cross-functional team, how does that come together? Is it smooth and natural, or does it feel like pulling teeth?
• Business Process – When you stumble on a process that works across departments, what happens next? Does it stay a one-off success, or do you find a way to lock it in, refine it, and scale it up until it’s part of how you always do things?

These layers of "glue" aren’t as visible as an org chart or a budget line, but they’re what make the whole machine run. If you ignore them, things will start to show their cracks.

So why do they get overlooked so often?

Why These Layers Get Neglected

Well, let's look at the facts. Of all the "glue layers" we talked about, you usually need a pretty sizable organization to have someone officially in charge of them. Most of the time these responsibilities sort of just fall into the COO role. But we need more than a catch-all.

The most common one we see is Communications. There's usually a team (or probably just one person) to keep employees informed about what's going on at the company, both internally and externally. This is a good start.

But the other layers? They tend to just settle into the natural rhythm of how people work. They're less "operations", and more about culture and habits. This isn't inherently a bad thing, but it does cause issues when gaps start to show and it's clear you need to improve in these areas.

Where the heck does that budget come from? Is it an IT thing? It's sort of related to HR? Communications can't afford it.

"Let's just keep doing things the way we've done it, this problem is too hard."

Sound familiar?

But it goes a step further. It's tricky to tell when not investing in these layers is actually causing a problem.

When the Layers Fail, but the Symptoms Look Like a Silo Problem

Every day we all deal with problems. Usually, we either:

• Fix them acutely to stop the immediate pain, or
• Abstract one layer to tackle the “bigger picture.”

But sometimes, you need to go one step further. That’s where the invisible layers really come into play, and where blame can get misplaced.

Here's a few examples:

• Missed Deadlines (Looks Like: Project Management Failure) → Underlying issue: There's a business process problem.
• Employee Turnover (Looks Like: HR Problem) → Underlying issue: employees feel disconnected from the company’s direction and decisions. The real problem isn’t benefits or exit interviews, it’s how the organization shares information and keeps people engaged.
• Budget Overruns (Looks Like: Finance Issue) → Underlying issue: Collaboration is absolutely killing you. In order to get consensus on things, you need to schedule a meeting to get everyone in the room to decide. After everyone eats their donut and catches up on how their daughter is doing with t-ball (guilty), they can start the conversation, just to schedule a follow up meeting to finally make some form of a decision.

Abstracting just one more layer (looking beyond the silo) can really help clarify where you should be focusing.

So what should we do?

Backing the Glue with People, Budget, and Culture

Well, my callout here is: we can do better. You can do better. But how do you even start?

Below is a non-exhaustive list of what I'd recommend:

Appoint champions or cross-functional leads for each layer of "glue".

Identify people who take ownership of key processes or knowledge areas. These champions become go-to experts, helping ensure consistency, answer questions quickly, and drive improvements across the organization. Listen to our podcast about the Champions Model here. [insert link]

Dedicate budget to strengthening these layers.

Invest in the systems, processes, and support that enable each layer to function effectively. This could include tools, frameworks, process design, or targeted consulting guidance 😉 - whatever is required to make the systems work, as well as the people executing it.

Include KPIs that measure team impact.

Track outcomes like efficiency, knowledge-sharing, or reduction in repeated issues to measure the effectiveness of the layer itself.

Build a culture that rewards improvement, not just firefighting.

Encourage and recognize when people are proactively solving problems, documenting best practices, and streamlining processes. Celebrate the small wins and knowledge-sharing, so that improving the system gets noticed just like handling the urgent stuff.

Wrap Up

At the end of the day, I feel like these invisible layers can't just be "nice-to-have's". They're the things that actually make your organization "hum". When you invest in strengthening these "invisible layers", the people working in them start performing better, small improvements start to stick, and the organization runs like it should. You won't get to perfection overnight, but you CAN start putting the right pieces in place tomorrow so fixing problems gets easier and good work can actually scale.