🖤 Open Works #018 How to Fix Feuding Teams

Welcome to Open Works. Every edition we solve a ‘people and culture’ problem crowd-sourced from the Open Org Community of 380+ Startup and Scale-up People Leaders.

💭 This Week’s People Problem

🖤 Our Take on How You Solve It

🏃 TL;DR

If your teams are clashing, you need to:

1️⃣ Acknowledge the tension.
2️⃣ Find the root cause.
3️⃣ Work with the leaders to co-create the fix.

Let’s break it down step by step. 👇

🚨 Step 1: Acknowledge the Problem

When tensions between teams boil over, it’s rarely a new issue. Your job is to bring it into the open and get everyone aligned that it’s a problem worth solving.

How to Spot and Address the Tension

• Individual complaints: Team members vent about “the other side” during 1:1s.

• Leadership discussions: The friction makes its way to your leadership team meetings.

• Survey/pulse data: Feedback or pulse surveys reveal frustration between teams.

• Personal observations: Meetings devolve into blame games or passive aggression.

Wherever the signal is coming from, start by addressing it directly with the leaders involved. Quick calls or 1:1s work best. Your goal is simple 👇️ 

🎯 Agreement that this is a problem, and it’s one worth fixing.

🌱 Step 2: Find the Root Cause

Acknowledgment is step one; now, it’s time to dig into what’s really going on.

💡 Common Root Causes:

1. Misaligned incentives: Teams are rewarded for competing, not collaborating.

2. Leadership dynamics: The leaders themselves aren’t aligned—or worse, they’re fighting.

3. Culture drift: Different norms and values are clashing.

4. The A**hole: One or two individuals are creating drama for everyone else.

How to Get to the Bottom of It

• 1:1 conversations: Speak with folks on the teams beforehand to pick up on dynamics you might not see in group settings.

• Team workshops: Run separate sessions with each team (without leaders present if you have to) to surface honest perspectives. Go for an open and frank conversation, framing what you’ve observed, the impact and inviting the team to share their perspective on what is at the root of the issue.

• Anonymous mechanism: Additionally, give people a chance to share what they might not feel safe saying aloud.

🛣️ Step 3: Facilitate “Honesty Day”

Once you’ve uncovered the root cause, it’s time to bring the leaders together for an “Honesty Day.”

What’s Honesty Day?

It’s a facilitated session with the leaders of the conflicting teams to confront the root cause and align on the fix. This is where you get to the heart of the matter and co-create a solution. Not going to lie, this can get pretty spicy so coffee up.

How It Works:

1️⃣ Share the findings: Start with a clear, neutral summary of the problems both teams identified, best done as a pre-read async.
2️⃣ Dig into the root cause: Use a structured discussion to explore what’s really behind the friction—whether it’s goals, incentives, or personal dynamics. 5 Whys or Fishbones work well here.
3️⃣ Co-create solutions: Best ideas to address the root cause. Focus on:
4️⃣ Agree on next steps: Dot vote priorities, agree owners and set a review date.

🛤️ From Honesty to Action

To avoid the “chat zone” trap—where discussions happen, but no action follows....

1. Communicate the solve: Have the leaders jointly share the outcome with their teams. Transparency + Togetherness = the stuff dreams are made of.

2. Involve the teams: Co-create any new processes, shared goals, or working agreements and agree a simple measure of success. Go for simple and plain english e.g: “we’ll know things are better if we see xyz” .

3. Check back in: After 4-12 weeks, run a retrospective to assess whether what got changed made a difference.

✅ Key Outcomes

You’ll have:

• Alignment from leaders and teams on the existence of the problem.

• A deep understanding of what’s causing the conflict.

• A co-created solution with buy-in from both teams.

• A framework for measuring progress and iterating on the fix.

📚️ Good reads relating to this problem…

 📔 The classic Thomas Kilmann conflict management model

📕 How Dropbox resolve personal conflict

📖 Culture Playbook: Working Through Conflict

🤓 Want to Share Your Messiest “People Problem”?

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🖤 John & Adam

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John & Adam

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