How many organisations claim to value “one-team”? I reckon a lot. I don’t see many operating that way. And the gap ain’t at the frontline.
Sam is a nice guy. He likes people and shows up for meetings whenever he is invited. He is cooperative and genuinely listens to others’ ideas. He’s warm and well liked across many parts of the organisation. He is good company and people seek him out for his opinion. He is also technically excellent in his field of expertise.
Despite Sam’s high levels of social capital and all that he has to offer other teams, he rarely invests time or energy in anything beyond the surface. He has certainly never done any work for an initiative or project from another area of the business. It has never occurred to him. It’s not that he resists collaborating with others, but the environment doesn’t really encourage it either.
It’s a source of real frustration for other teams across the business. Sam’s input could have improved the outcome of many projects. He has technical skills beyond the reach of others working on those projects. Instead, he focuses only on work from within his own department. Sam has delivered some interesting work, well received by clients and others alike. But these projects rarely include conversations with other areas of the business or any coordinated activity with other projects currently underway.
What’s interesting is that one of the organisation’s corporate values is “one-team”. A reference to the type of commitment the organisation would like from individuals to the bigger picture goals. More than once, a frustrated colleague has questioned Sam’s commitment to this value. Not to his face of course. He’s a nice guy after all.
The impact of Sam’s choices is not one of failure or loss. It’s a feeling that the organisation is leaving something on the table when planning and delivering work.
That there is an opportunity being missed or a next level not reached.
When we ask Sam why he focuses only on the work of his department, he points to the expectations of his immediate team and leaders, that his time should be spent on their work, not getting distracted by other things. Push a little further, and Sam will tell you his leaders are clear about the expected status and value of the department relative to others. I’m paraphrasing. He’d never say it like that. He’s a nice guy.
And herein lies the challenge for organisations who seek to innovate, lift performance, increase capacity without increasing headcount, and improve the quality of their solutions for customers and community – it is that departments are seen by their leaders in relative terms rather than in integrated terms. If, at the end of the day, the performance of my department and its contribution to strategic outcomes is the source of my status as a leader, social identity research tells us that belonging to a high-status group is intoxicating stuff.
This brings us to the topic of alignment. Or misalignment to be exact.
Organisations need to align on two dimensions, vertically – in that the work of individuals at all levels of the organisation is headed in the same direction, and horizontally – in that the work in one part of the business is supportive of the work in another. Interestingly, both dimensions take effort, both are important, however horizontal alignment seems to be the hardest to crack, often referred to in terms of rigid silos or chimneys.
It is in horizontal alignment that we see the most opportunities for increasing innovation through shared ideas and perspectives, improving performance through shared eyes on quality, and increasing capacity through shared resources. These opportunities are leveraged through collaborative and integrative practices that can’t happen by sheer individual good will alone. They rely on establishing an environment where collaboration can have its biggest positive impact.
Many companies above a certain size organise work functionally. They also tend to drift into hierarchies as a way of managing the scope and cognitive load of all they must get done. As such the best opportunities for horizontal alignment emerge in bands or layers across the organisation. These layers are those moments of the hierarchy punctuated by a cohort of leaders.
One big reason employees at lower levels of the hierarchy work together across functions is because horizontal alignment and collaboration exist at the leader cohort closest to them. It shows up in the way leaders plan, prioritise, and share accountability across functions. In shared planning forums where leaders from different areas sit together to sequence and coordinate work. In prioritisation trade-offs where one department willingly adjusts its timeline because another’s need is more urgent. And in joint accountability for outcomes, where success isn’t measured by what my team delivered, but by what we delivered together. These are a byproduct of leaders who see themselves as part of the same system. And the reason these conditions exist at one level is because the same conditions exist in the leader cohort above them. And so on, you get the picture. Which all goes to say that the ultimate precondition for collaboration across functions sits in the alignment at the very top of the organisation.
How does a CEO wrangle the respective status needs and self-esteem of their Executive and ensure alignment? Ironically, by first acknowledging the unique identities and contributions of different functions and allowing these to exist. From there, the CEO can share the need for horizontal alignment as a priority. Patrick Lencioni, author of The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, would say this means helping team members see the Executive as their Team 1 – their priority team – and the team that reports to them as their Team 2.
From there it becomes a collective problem-solving exercise. Share the data for the problem to be solved. Share the vision of a collaborative future. When you see it, what does it really look like? What are people doing, thinking and saying?
Expect a messy middle. No matter the level, a leader’s role in supporting collaboration processes is to hold the centre as things become uncertain, clashing perspectives create messy thinking, and the collective path forward seems undoable. Time, persistence, perspective taking, and assuming good intent are the only things that work here. Not more data, not weaponising accountability, not punishment, just regulated emotional responses to the messiness until you get to the other side.
So back to Sam. He has everything it takes to be a great cross-functional collaborator. Now he needs the conditions to encourage it. And that means a leader whose own leader sees the system and has their back to create these conditions.
Making “one-team” a way of working means aligning leaders to fix the system, and Sam will follow suit.
Not sure where alignment is strong – or where it may be breaking down?
Use our Aligned Organisation Checklist as a quick sense-check to reflect on the conditions leaders are creating, and the conversations that may be needed next.