Ending Departmental Turf Wars

Creative Solutions

Caroline Vanderlip already navigates departmental competition as CEO of three-year-old SharedBook, a New York City online scrapbook company with 45 employees. The company's development team, which designs the system architecture, can bump up against the operations team that implements it. Tensions also arise between SharedBook's marketing and product teams over which features to implement next.

Vanderlip, 51, spends a lot of time trying to resolve these battles. "It's really a question of, with finite resources, what do you tackle first?" she says. "That's where a lot of the conflict between departments comes from."

How you choose to allocate limited resources can increase competition between departments, especially if your own interests and abilities as the leader gravitate toward a particular part of the company.

An R&D minded entrepreneur, for example, might not notice friction building in other departments. A hands-on approach and intense communication are critical to easing depart-mental friction, says Candida Brush, entrepreneurship division chair at Babson College in Wellesley, Mass. "Where a lot of this stuff comes out is over a beer at the end of the day," she says. "You do have to pay attention in case something is bubbling up."

Cooch's daily score card, which generates 80 metrics, can also provide a red flag for interdepartmental battles brewing on the down-low. "You'll start to see numbers that aren't moving in the direction they're supposed to," he says. "That allows you to focus your questions on certain parts of the business."

Kinnear sees companies large and small designating team leaders who bring together employees from all divisions to serve a specific demographic, a certain industry or an important client. General Electric (GE Quote) created GE Automotive, an integrated team that serves the auto industry. P&G has a cross-function team that focuses solely on Wal-Mart (WMT Quote).

Switching from a vertical model that's focused on functions and regional areas to a horizontal model focused on the customer is "the nirvana in terms of trying to deal with this issue," Kinnear says. "You still have turf issues, but the operating understanding is that everybody is there to serve an end customer."

Ultimately, solving the problem requires good management that helps employees see the company's big picture. Departmental competition "is an inevitable, age-old issue. It's human nature," Vanderlip says. "You have to make sure everybody's objectives are aligned."