One of my most trusted team members even stopped me and asked "Why are you doing all of this? This is an inter-team exercise, but the VP isn't doing any of the work". I was so eager to make the situation better that I was willing to do anything in the name of "teamwork".

Big mistake.

Try as I may, every time I thought I had come up with a good system, it was met with indifference. The VP never bought in that there was a problem, and it seems like he wasn't going to be bought into the solution either. Sure, at the end we came up with a process that we would try, but it just led to the third failure...

The Third Failure: No Buy-In On Execution

We rolled out the new process to both the Product and PS teams. I had kept the senior members of the PS team in the loop as I was developing the solution, so what was being presented came as no surprise to them. The VP of Product was barely involved, and the product team was absorbing this new initiative for the very first time during the first rollout meeting. There were a lot of questions and scepticism, from both teams, but the PS team, being involved from the very beginning, was committed to making this work.

The VP of Product couldn't be more lukewarm in his endorsement of the new initiative. I think the most ringing endorsement was "We'll try it out, and see what happens".

My heart sank. I had spent weeks iterating through a plan that was designed to make collaboration better between two teams that had difficulty working together previously, and the leaders of the teams couldn't be consistent in our support and commitment.

I can only imagine what the teams were thinking. They were probably musing "Another make-work initiative destined for failure".

They wouldn't be too off-the-mark if they had thought that.

The Bottom line - Commitment is Everything

Looking back, the entire endeavour was destined for failure because it was lacking in buy-in and commitment. There was a...

Lack of Commitment to the Problem - We couldn't agree there was a problem, so we didn't have the urgency to create a solution

Lack of Commitment on an Effort to Fix Things - One party couldn't care less to participate in developing a solution to the problem

Lack of the Commitment to Execute a Solution - The best-laid plans are destined for failure when some can't be bothered to actively and enthusiastically execute

From failure comes lessons, and from lessons come improvement. Next week I'll cover the things I do to improve commitment to cross-team projects!