Collaboration | The walls between departments are created not by bad blood, but by information asymmetry.
Collaboration
When looking at companies with poor interdepartmental collaboration, many executives say it is because they "don't get along."
Sales and development are not in sync.
CS and sales have different levels of urgency.
The administrative department does not understand the front lines.
The front lines do not trust the administrative department.
Of course, I am not saying that emotional issues are non-existent.
But that is not the essence of the problem.
What destroys collaboration is not personality, but information asymmetry.
Sales sees the pressure from customers.
Development sees the limits of resources.
CS sees the warning signs of churn.
The administrative department sees the deterioration of the numbers.
The CEO sees the whole picture.
Everyone is looking at a different landscape.
Moreover, those landscapes are not sufficiently shared with one another.
That is why their respective versions of what is right clash.
As a result, it appears as "poor collaboration."
The problem in an organization during a crisis is not that the relationships between departments are cold.
It is that the realities they are looking at are not aligned.
This time, the theme is that kind of collaboration.
In my previous article, I wrote that meetings that don't reach a decision are not a matter of time, but a result of incorrect agenda design.
Click here for the previous article
Unless you distinguish whether a meeting is for sharing information, making decisions, or removing bottlenecks, the company will not move forward.
This is absolutely true.
However, there are companies where even if something is decided in a meeting, it doesn't mesh on the front lines.
Priorities have been set.
Roles have been assigned.
What needs to be done is clear.
Yet, the movements between departments are not aligned.
Sales runs as sales.
Development protects as development.
CS feels the sense of crisis as CS.
The administrative department produces the numbers.
And yet, as a company, it is not moving forward.
At the root of that is a failure of collaboration.
Collaboration during a crisis is not about getting along.
It is about creating a state where departments that see different landscapes can share the same reality.
Situation
This is a common scene in many companies.
Sales are slowing down.
There are new projects, but the momentum toward closing them is dropping.
Retention of existing customers is also becoming uncertain.
Interruptions are increasing at the development site, and priorities are wavering.
Gross margins have also fallen.
There is less room in the budget as well.
In this situation, the misalignment between departments becomes apparent.
Sales says:
"We can't afford to lose these deals right now. If we don't meet the customer's requests, we'll lose to the competition."
Development says:
"If we keep adding individual requests like this, all our existing critical projects will be delayed."
CS says:
"Existing customers are cooling off before we even get new orders. Retention is more at risk right now."
The administrative department says:
"If we don't look at gross margins and payment terms rather than just sales, the numbers won't hold up."
Everyone is saying the right thing.
This is what makes it difficult.
It is not that any one person is wrong.
Each person is simply speaking about the reality they see from their own position.
However, if things continue this way, meetings will result in conflict.
Sales thinks, "They don't understand the reality on the ground."
Development thinks, "They are forcing unreasonable demands on us again."
CS thinks, "They are only looking at new business and taking existing customers lightly."
The administrative department thinks, "They are proceeding with their work based on gut feelings."
Thus, in the company, the phrase "poor collaboration" begins to emerge.
But in reality, that is not the case.
It is not that collaboration is poor.
It is that the realities they are looking at are not aligned.
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Problem
Silos between departments do not stem from bad relationships.
They stem from information asymmetry.
Sales has direct contact with customers.
Therefore, they know the temperature of a potential lost deal and the urgency of not wanting to miss out on this project right now.
However, they cannot see what changes in development priorities will cause for the whole.
Development sees the strain on man-hours.
Therefore, they know which interruptions will break the whole system.
However, they cannot see the temperature on the customer side or the pressure in the sales field.
CS sees the accumulation of dissatisfaction among existing customers.
The administrative department sees discrepancies in the numbers.
The CEO sees the allocation of resources for the whole.
Everyone holds different information and has a different sense of crisis.
What happens to the organization at this time is not a disagreement of opinions.
It is a disagreement in crisis perception.
For Sales, the crisis might be a lost deal.
For Development, the crisis might be a resource collapse.
For CS, the crisis might be a decline in retention rates.
For the administrative department, the crisis might be a deterioration in gross profit or cash flow.
All of these are crises.
But if there is no alignment on which to handle first, the organization will operate based on departmental optimization.
As a result, it looks like they are collaborating, but in reality, they are canceling each other out.
Development dislikes the deals that Sales brings in.
CS feels that the plans Development protects are out of sync with the reality on the ground.
Sales cannot allocate man-hours to the customers CS wants to protect.
The business side thinks the expenditures the administrative department wants to stop are necessary investments.
Once in this state, the company is no longer a single organization,
but a collection of multiple departments each asserting their own correctness.
What is truly scary in a crisis is not the departmental conflict itself.
It is proceeding with management while each department holds a different reality.
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Judgment, Management, Execution
So, how should collaboration be built?
First, what is necessary as a judgment is
to assume that there is a difference in the information visible to each department.
Why does Sales say that?
What is Development afraid of?
What unusual changes is CS seeing?
Which figures does the Administrative department see as risky?
Instead of dismissing this as "not understanding,"
one must understand it as the bias of information that each possesses.
Next, what is necessary as management is
to create a reality that is viewed in common across departments.
For example,
- Standardize the definition of key customers among Sales, CS, and Management
- Standardize the approval conditions for interruptive projects between Sales and Development
- Standardize the criteria for low-margin projects between Sales and the Administrative department
- Standardize the signs of at-risk customers among CS, Sales, and Management
- Standardize the priority of payment delays among Accounting, Sales, and Management
Without such common indicators, collaboration becomes a matter of intuition.
Collaboration based on intuition does not hold up in times of crisis.
And what is necessary as execution is
to place connection responsibility on the work that occurs at the boundaries between departments.
At what point in a sales project does Development get involved?
Who takes the initiative for at-risk customers?
Who stops projects with poor profit margins?
Who negotiates with customers who have payment delays, and who makes the decision?
Collaboration always breaks down at the boundaries.
Therefore, if you do not place roles at the boundaries, collaboration will end as mere slogans.
A strong organization is not a company where departments are on friendly terms.
It is a company that can make the same decisions even while holding different information.
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Result
In companies where collaboration functions well, friction between departments decreases.
However, this does not mean that differences of opinion disappear.
Rather, different opinions still emerge.
But instead of those opinions clashing and causing a standstill, they function as material for decision-making.
The customer perspective from Sales is reflected in the priorities of Development.
The sense of urgency regarding retention from CS changes how Sales operates.
The figures from the Administrative department are reflected in cross-departmental priorities.
The CEO's judgment is translated into the language of each department's specific role.
As a result, the company's movement changes.
The same conflicts are no longer repeated in meetings.
Complaints on the front lines about 'that department again' decrease.
Handling of exceptions decreases.
Responses to key customers become more profound.
And limited resources begin to gravitate toward where they are truly needed.
Conversely, in companies where collaboration is broken,
the sense of correctness within each department becomes increasingly rigid.
Sales only sees the crises of Sales.
Development only sees the limitations of Development.
CS only sees the discomforts of CS.
The Administrative department only sees the numbers.
As a result, even though everyone is correct, the company loses.
What makes the difference during a crisis is not just the strength of individual departments.
It is whether or not reality can be connected between departments.
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Structural Explanation
Why is collaboration so important?
The reason is that
almost all management issues during a crisis are cross-departmental.
Revenue improvement cannot be solved by Sales alone.
Retention rate improvement cannot be solved by CS alone.
Gross profit improvement cannot be solved by the Administrative department alone.
Cash flow improvement cannot be solved by Accounting alone.
Adjusting development priorities cannot be decided by Development alone.
In other words, the issues during a crisis
all straddle the boundaries of departments.
Therefore, as long as you remain optimized within your department, you will never be able to solve them.
What is needed here is not to get along well.
It is a structure that assumes information asymmetry and still aligns decisions.
This also connects to the meetings mentioned in the previous article.
In meetings with poor agenda design, the process ends with just a list of information from each department.
Unless it is clear what is being shared and what is being decided, the asymmetry will not be resolved.
Instead, they end by simply confirming each other's correctness.
What stops a company is not conflict itself.
It is continuing to make decisions while the realities of each department remain disconnected.
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Conclusion
The walls between departments are created not by bad relationships, but by information asymmetry.
What is needed in crisis management is not superficial teamwork.
The reality seen by Sales.
The reality seen by Development.
The reality seen by CS.
The reality seen by the Administrative department.
It is a structure that connects these and transforms them into a unified judgment.
If collaboration functions, the company becomes one, even if the departments are different.
If collaboration breaks down, the company will not move forward, even if everyone is correct.
In other words, collaboration is not a matter of human relationships.
It is a design for connection that enables crisis management.
The next article will deal with funds, the issue where this lack of collaboration surfaces in its most severe form.
It is about how the numbers a manager should look at before cash runs out are not profit, but timing.
If this article resonates with you, please 'like' it so you can look back on it later.
In this series, I will articulate crisis management from the perspective of a 'CEO's right-hand person,' divided into symptoms, judgment, management, and execution. Please follow me if you want to keep up with the rest.
The word that should remain at the end is collaboration.