Coaching practices for My Departments Are Each Winning Their Own Little Battles While the Whole Thing Loses They Hoard Information Compete for Credit and Treat Each Other as Rivals Instead of as One Effort and the More Each Group Optimizes for Itself the Worse the Overall Result Gets
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For My Departments Are Each Winning Their Own Little Battles While the Whole Thing Loses They Hoard Information Compete for Credit and Treat Each Other as Rivals Instead of as One Effort and the More Each Group Optimizes for Itself the Worse the Overall Result Gets, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- My departments are each winning their own little battles while the whole thing loses
- Everyone on my team is quietly playing for their own scoreboard
- Every team here is busy chasing its own goals and the cross-cutting thing that actually matters keeps falling through the cracks
- Every time I throw myself into one thing I care about, another one I also care about just goes dim and I stop wanting it
- My team keeps fighting over what to do first and it always gets personal, but underneath it I think we just quietly mean different things by "important"
Practices that may help
- Cover and move (teamwork over silos)
Every team and department exists to support the others toward the same mission, not to win locally.
Extreme Ownership, Made Practical - Align around collective results, not individual status
Teams fail when members prioritize their own visibility or department’s success over the shared goal.
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Made Practical - Set one organization-wide priority per quarter
Identify the single most important thing the company must accomplish this quarter, and make it everyone’s top priority.
The Rockefeller Habits: Scaling Up with Rhythm and Focus - Surface goal conflicts before they undermine each other
Goals that compete for the same time or emotional bandwidth will suppress each other — make the conflict explicit.
Goal Systems Theory: How Goals Work Together (and Against Each Other) - Define "important" explicitly as a team
Before sorting tasks, align on what "important" means — which goals, for whom, over what time horizon.
The Eisenhower Matrix for Teams - Decentralized command
Push decisions to the people closest to the problem, bounded by a clear commander’s intent.
Extreme Ownership, Made Practical - Run a regular team elimination review
Periodically review what the team is doing that no longer serves any current goal.
The Eisenhower Matrix for Teams - Organize effort under one top-level goal
Arrange your day-to-day goals as a hierarchy serving one overarching aim.
Grit: Passion and Perseverance, Honestly Assessed - Batch low-stakes decisions to reduce decision fatigue
Group routine decisions into a single weekly slot rather than making each one as it appears.
Task Batching: Grouping Similar Work to Cut Switching Costs - Engage in productive ideological conflict
Teams that avoid conflict don’t avoid disagreement — they bury it, where it grows into resentment and bad decisions.
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Made Practical
Related concerns
- Goal Misalignment
Arie Kruglanski’s goal systems theory proposes that goals and the means to achieve them form an associative network in the mind, with each element linked to others. When a single means can serve multiple goals (multifinality), motivation is amplified; when goals compete for the same means or time (goal conflict), pursuing one can suppress or extinguish motivation for another. The theory is well-developed conceptually with a body of supporting experimental research.
- Team Conflict
Competing — high assertive, low cooperative — is appropriate when the decision is urgent, high-stakes, and not open for debate.
Use Competing when speed or safety matters more than buy-in
- The One Thing With My Team
Teams fail when members prioritize their own visibility or department’s success over the shared goal.
Align around collective results, not individual status
- Competing Priorities
More than three active priorities is the same as no priorities — attention cannot be shared four ways.
Maintain at most three active priorities at one time
- How To Align Team Priorities
Before sorting tasks, align on what "important" means — which goals, for whom, over what time horizon.
Define "important" explicitly as a team
- No Separation Of Roles And Responsibilities In Current Department Leading To Conflict
Every team and department exists to support the others toward the same mission, not to win locally.
Cover and move (teamwork over silos)
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