In my career leading cross-functional organizations, I have noticed that as companies scale, they often fall victim to a silent killer of momentum and morale: the shift from a mission-driven “we” to an adversarial “they.”
In the early days of a startup, culture is not something you write on a slide deck. It is something you breathe. There is a palpable energy in the room. You are small and you are fast. Most importantly, everyone is rowing in the same direction. When the boat leaks, nobody asks whose department is responsible. Everyone just grabs a bucket.
But as organizations grow, the “we” becomes “they.”
The Evolution of Risk: From Launch to Protection
In a startup, the greatest risk is failure to launch. To survive, you must collaborate. However, as an organization becomes a large corporation, the primary risk shifts to protection. This is where the COA (Cover Your Assets) mentality takes root.
Silos emerge and departments begin to prioritize their own internal KPIs over the company North Star. Relationships become adversarial. Instead of asking how we can solve a problem, the dialogue shifts to how a leader can make sure their team is not blamed for it.
The Cardinal Sin: Throwing the Team Under the Bus
I once witnessed a moment that perfectly encapsulated this rot. A project had hit a snag and during a high-stakes meeting with the customer, a leader said:
“Engineering was not able to deliver.”
In one sentence, they traded the team’s trust for a momentary “out” with the client. Using “they” instead of “we” in front of a customer is a cardinal sin. It does not make the leader look more competent. It makes the entire organization look fractured, unreliable, and amateur.
The impact was instantaneous. When the development team heard they had been used as a scapegoat to save face, the guards went up. The “all in this together” spirit vanished. From that point on, good luck getting anyone to do a favor or go above and beyond. Why should they put in extra effort for a leader who abandons them the moment a client asks a hard question?
Cultivation: The Lesson of the Terrible Golf League
Many leaders think they can buy culture with a ping pong table or the default answer which is drinking. While a happy hour feels like an easy win, it is often a lazy substitute for real culture building. Alcohol can mask deep-seated issues or exclude team members. It creates a club rather than a community.
Culture must be cultivated. It is the most important part of a leader’s job. Earlier in my career, I saw an executive try something I was highly skeptical of at first. He started a company golf league. Every Thursday, we were encouraged to leave work early to head to the course.
This part is key: it happened during business hours. The company was essentially saying that building these relationships was just as important as the spreadsheets we left behind. It also meant that people could participate and still get home to their families at a normal time.
We were not pros. In fact, most of us were terrible. We were hacking our way through the grass and losing balls in the woods. But there was a brilliant method to the madness. The executive team would intentionally pair people from completely different departments. A junior developer might be paired with a senior VP of Finance. A marketing manager might spend four hours with a QA lead.
The magic was not in the beer at the end of the round. It was in the shared vulnerability of being bad at something together. It turned “those people” into “my friend Dave.”
The “Too Busy” Litmus Test
When you try to pull people together for cross-functional work, you will always hear from people who say they are “too busy.”
We need to look closer at that. Busy is good. Busy means we have work to do. But “too busy” is a cultural killer. Often, the people who claim they are too busy feel that way because they feel a lack of support. They are in a bunker because they feel like they are the only ones holding up their end of the boat. Their “busyness” is actually a cry for help or a symptom of a broken system.
If a leader says they are too busy to engage in the community of the company, it is a red flag. It means they have prioritized their silo over the soul of the organization. As a leader, it is your job to pull those people out of the bunker and show them they have teammates again.
Choice Architecture: Breaking the Bunker
To get back to working as a team, you have to act as a “Choice Architect” for your organization. You need to nudge people into low-stakes but important collaboration. You cannot always rely on the same group of volunteers. Reach for the people who are at risk of hiding.
I recommend assigning cross-functional teams to projects that sit outside their daily grind. This forces people to see their colleagues as people, not obstacles.
- The Event Committee: Have a mixed group from Engineering, Sales, and HR plan the holiday party.
- The “How We Work” Task Force: Ask people who never talk to each other to spend one hour a week identifying one process that makes everyone’s life harder.
- Community Volunteering: Send a cross-functional team to work at a local food bank for an afternoon during the work day.
- Office Improvements: Let a mixed group decide how to spend a small budget on improving the shared workspace.
The Leadership Outcome: Unified Execution
To move back toward a team, leadership must move from passing blame to solving problems. This requires three tactical shifts:
- Watch Your Pronouns: In front of a customer, there is only We. If a mistake happened, the organization owns it.
- Stop the Scapegoat Hunt: When a project fails, ban the word who in the meeting. Focus entirely on how and what.
- The “We” Shield: Leaders must take the heat from the client or the board so their teams feel safe enough to be honest about what went wrong.
Scaling is a sign of success, but it is also a test of character. Cultivating an environment where people feel safe enough to stop hiding and start helping is the most important element of your job. You can delegate strategy, but you cannot delegate the soul of the organization.