Change Management: Improve Team Cohesion to Foster Customer Satisfaction
Imagine stepping into a tech startup where potential is overshadowed by tension. Executives and employees are at odds, and teams function in silos. Each side believes the other is the problem, the company faces setbacks, and investor pressure mounts. If collaboration doesn’t improve, funding may be at risk, and success could slip away.
This scenario is all too common in companies today – and it is one that I’ve frequently experienced. As an executive and organizational advisor, I often encounter similar dynamics, which point to a critical truth: effective change management is not just about ideas and processes; it’s about people.
The Context
Recently I was brought on as an organizational advisor at a tech startup. The company had been in operation for five years and had grown rapidly in a short period of time. Nonetheless, the company operated lean, under a flat hierarchy. The CEO directly oversaw the development and other technical teams while non-technical teams were individually managed by a team lead.
As the company grew, tensions had risen between the CEO and employees, and between the development and sales teams. Amidst lack of collaboration and mounting organizational mistrust, product fixes and updates took longer to roll out, and customer satisfaction began to stall. With stagnating growth, the board insisted on implementing changes to ensure the company could remain competitive. My appointment was seen as a necessary step to facilitate better communication, align objectives, and create a cohesive organizational culture that would put the company back on track.
The Problem
The CEO, a tech founder with decades of experience in software development, believed the product would sell itself. This conviction was a core tenet in his leadership, and he encouraged the development team to adopt a rigid approach focused on hard-coded product features. As the company grew, he maintained the same mindset and standard operating procedures. In turn, the development team, who worked directly under the CEO, prioritized executing his ideas over flexibility and innovation. This rigidity stifled creativity, as team members adhered strictly to the established vision rather than exploring new ideas or responding to evolving customer needs.
By prioritizing the initial vision and established operating approach, the CEO inadvertently shielded the development team from direct customer insights – causing a disconnect between them and the sales team. While development was dedicated to executing the CEO’s vision, sales was faced with the realities of customer feedback and market demands. This misalignment escalated tensions into mistrust and negatively impacted company morale.
As the sales team sought to advocate for customer needs, they found themselves sidelined, struggling to communicate the urgent feedback they received. While development had direct access to the CEO, sales rarely interfaced with him, and this gave rise to a sense of favoritism. Lack of access to the CEO and differences in operating approaches between teams hampered sales's ability to A/B test and adapt strategies. They grew frustrated with what they saw as the development team’s inability to pivot quickly based on customer insights – causing feelings of disempowerment and disengagement. Meanwhile, the CEO and development team felt overwhelmed by constant requests for changes after product updates had already launched, viewing these demands as threats to their vision and hard work – causing a lack of receptiveness towards feedback. And in the crux of it all, customers suffered.
The mounting tension between the CEO and development on one side and sales on the other side jeopardized not only team dynamics but also funding, as the board recognized the urgent need for alignment to secure investor confidence. In response to growing pressure and the potential for funding withdrawal, my role became crucial in bridging the divide between teams. I sought to foster collaboration, encourage agile responses to market changes, and ultimately align both development and sales on a cohesive vision that would meet evolving customer expectations.
The Solution
Address Company Mistrust
To tackle the deep-seated mistrust within this company, the first step was to establish communication. I worked to initiate open and honest dialogue between the CEO, development, and sales by conducting a series of mediated discussions. These discussions gave each side the space to voice their concerns and perspectives. Each discussion opened with a specific problem, followed by individual development-focused and sales-focused solutions. I walked the team through potential short-term and long-term outcomes of each solution, including both advantages and disadvantages. In initial discussions, the teams learned how to make informed, big-picture decisions. In further discussions, they began to propose joint solutions that incorporated the perspectives of each team.
As the CEO listened in on these discussions, he developed a rounded perspective of the everyday challenges both teams faced and directly witnessed how communication fostered creative solutions. Further, the development and sales teams discovered that they often faced similar problems, albeit viewed from different angles. This new discovery helped them to shift from individual goals to shared goals. By creating a space for discussion, we started to break down the barriers that created mistrust and to move away from problems towards solutions.
Foster Effective Collaboration
Given the disconnect between the development and sales teams, establishing collaboration was essential. To address this, I proposed several weeks of job shadowing, followed by a cross-team workshop. Shadowing helped the teams to better understand each other’s day-to-day and how their work was interconnected. Job shadowing encouraged empathy and understanding. With a newfound understanding of each other, the teams developed a holistic approach to their individual goals, were reminded of shared goals, and established operating procedures that would help them both.
The cross-team workshop gave the development and sales teams an opportunity to come together and share insights about what they had learned from job shadowing, to propose solutions on the challenges the other faced, and to engage in joint goal-setting. This workshop gave each team a sense of ownership over not only their own work but over the other team’s contributions – and how each related back to the overall company’s goals. Ultimately, the greater sense of ownership boosted company morale. This initiative was also instrumental in bridging the gap between the CEO’s vision and the realities of every day operation.
Adopt Agile Approaches
To respond more effectively to customer needs, the company needed to embrace agile practices within the development team. I introduced weekly meetings and regular sprint reviews, facilitated by the CEO. Previously, the development and sales teams met only when problems arose, and the CEO rarely interfaced with his sales team. Weekly meetings were critical for the CEO to communicate directly with and understand the role of his sales team, and for the development and sales teams to maintain communication with each other so that they could tackle problems before they arose.
Regular meetings gave the development team an opportunity to present the outcome of their hard work and for the sales team to present their deep market knowledge before the launch of product updates. As a result, the development team was able to quickly pivot before updates, maintaining a focus on innovation while still honoring the initial vision set by the CEO. Additionally, because feedback took place before launches, the development team felt their contributions were acknowledged, ensuring they remained receptive and responsive to product changes. In turn, sales had direct access to the CEO, felt heard, and were assured that the needs of customers were reflected in final product updates. These consistent check-ins between teams were instrumental in acknowledging the contributions of each team. Further, they allowed for quick and iterative improvements to the product before launches, ensuring that the development team stayed connected to customer needs and that the sales team contributed to product development.
Build Trust Together
To cultivate trust, I suggested joint projects between the development and sales teams. The cross-team workshop had already established the groundwork for greater collaboration and ownership over not only individual team goals but also over company goals. I envisioned furthering this partnership by establishing a cross-functional team that was dedicated to tackling specific joint challenges. The team was co-managed by both a development and sales lead, and reported directly to the CEO – thereby giving the CEO insight into both team’s perspectives. Additionally, collaborative projects further developed the relationship between teams, encouraging team members to see themselves less as “development” or “sales” people and to instead work side-by-side. This fostered a sense of camaraderie and shared accountability.
Celebrating the successes of joint initiatives is equally important. And I encouraged the CEO to recognize both small achievements and big milestones collectively, to reinforce the sense of camaraderie and teamwork. These celebrations showed that collaboration yielded tangible benefits, both for the teams involved and for the company as a whole. Moreover, these acknowledgements encouraged teams outside of development and sales to share in the celebration, boosting overall company morale.
Engage Leadership for Sustained Support
For these initiatives to gain traction amongst the overall company, it was vital to secure ongoing support from the CEO. Because the company operated under a flat hierarchy, I was able to include the CEO in each initiative. I further recommended that each team work together to create reports to the CEO. These reports presented clear, data-driven narratives that demonstrated how the teams had collaborated to foster greater innovation, better product outcomes, and increased customer satisfaction.
Regular updates gave the CEO insight into the direct impact of collaborative initiatives and encouraged him to embrace them across other teams, beyond development and sales. These updates also ensured he understood the value of adapting to customer insights, thereby shifting his perspective from a rigid adherence to initial ideas to a more flexible, customer-focused approach. This alignment not only enhanced team dynamics but also restored investor confidence in the company's direction.
