Same Team, Different Jerseys: Why Your Org Shouldn’t Be at War With Itself
Marketing vs. Sales. Product vs. Engineering. Leadership vs. Literally Everyone. These aren’t fun little rivalries. They’re not spicy workplace banter. They’re dysfunctions. And if you’ve normalized them, your company is running on broken systems.
You are not on opposing teams. You are one team with different roles.
Stop Framing Collaboration Like a Turf War
If your product team is rolling their eyes at marketing, or if your engineers are whispering about how “design always changes everything last minute,” you’ve got a structural issue, not a personnel one. Internal finger-pointing happens when:
Teams have misaligned incentives
There’s no shared definition of success
Communication happens too late (or not at all)
Everyone’s scrambling to protect their own time and sanity
You don’t fix that by telling people to be nicer. You fix that by building connective tissue between functions—clear goals, open feedback loops, shared wins.
Silos Make People Selfish
When each department is working toward their own priorities, collaboration becomes transactional. People stop thinking about what’s best for the company and start thinking about what’s easiest for their team.
So now instead of solving for the user, you're solving for internal politics.
And that's when progress dies.
Want your departments to stop fighting each other? Give them a reason to fight together. Alignment doesn’t happen just because you all showed up to the same all-hands and ignored everything that everyone said. It happens when you:
Set one clear North Star and tie everyone's goals to it
Reward cross-functional wins, not just department-specific KPIs
Get everyone in the same room before decisions are made, not after
Leadership Sets the Tone
If you’re a leader who plays favorites or pits functions against each other, intentionally or not, you’re creating a culture where mistrust thrives. The most successful leaders we work with are the ones who:
Build bridges across teams
Model respect for every function, not just their own
Step in when blame starts flying and reframe the conversation around shared purpose
If your org is full of mini turf wars, people aren’t going to work harder to fix it. They’re going to check out. Or worse: start playing politics.
Here’s What a Healthy Org Looks Like
In high-trust environments, marketing isn’t scared to ask product for help. Engineering isn’t rolling their eyes at design. Sales isn’t dreading the next campaign because it was “clearly written by someone who has never talked to a customer.”
You get feedback earlier. You make decisions faster. You ship better work.
Here’s how you start creating that kind of environment:
1. Define Shared Language and Success Metrics
If every team defines success differently, you’ll always be fighting about what done looks like. Set cross-functional goals tied to a single North Star—whether that’s revenue, retention, product adoption, or something else. Bonus points if you write those goals down together at the start of the quarter.
Here’s an idea: Host a quarterly “goal alignment” session with representatives from each function. Not a status update—a strategy session. Ask, “How does your team’s work support this shared goal?” If someone can’t answer that, you’ve just found a misalignment to fix.
2. Build a Pre-Mortem Into Every Launch
Before any project goes live, get all relevant teams in a room to talk through how things might go wrong. Marketing sees different risks than product. Sales sees different risks than design. Surfacing those concerns early gives you a smoother path forward—and helps teams understand each other’s realities.
3. Make Respect the Default (Not the Exception)
If your company culture treats some roles as “more strategic” or “more technical” or “more essential,” you’ve already lost. Every function plays a role in delivering value. Everyone is an expert in something. The org thrives when that expertise is respected.
You don’t need more rules. You need more respect.
And that starts with the systems, rituals, and everyday interactions that shape how your team works. At The Threadsmith Group, we help companies rebuild the connective tissue they forgot they needed—between functions, between people, between purpose and execution.
If your team is playing tug-of-war with itself, let’s fix that before it breaks you.
You don’t need more rules. You need more respect.
At The Threadsmith Group, we help companies rebuild the connective tissue they forgot they needed—between functions, between people, between purpose and execution. If your team is playing tug-of-war with itself, let’s fix that before it breaks you.