When Team Dynamics Go Wrong: Why Departments Turn Inward and Start Blaming Each Other

I’ve worked with enough digital, product, operational, and commercial teams to see the same pattern play out again and again: a company starts to struggle, a delivery stalls, a project becomes stressful, and instead of tackling the root cause, teams begin to turn on each other.

Developers claim sales “promise too much”.

Sales insist developers “say no to everything”.

Marketing says product “won’t listen”.

Product says marketing “doesn’t read the brief”.

Customer support says “nobody tells us anything”.

The list goes on.

Every department feels overworked, unheard, or misunderstood — and instead of addressing structural issues, people slip into simplified explanations: the problem must be them, not us.

This dynamic isn’t created by any single team or individual. It grows slowly, almost invisibly, out of normal work pressures: unclear goals, patchy communication, mismatched expectations, and a lack of shared language between disciplines. Before long, silos harden. Groups defend their territory. Leaders spend more time soothing disputes than solving problems.

This article looks at how these divides form, how they quietly shape a company’s culture, and how leaders and teams can work deliberately to bridge the gaps. The aim isn’t to create a “perfectly aligned” organisation — that doesn’t exist — but to show what it looks like when departments stop blaming each other and start operating as one system.

Part 1: Why Silos Form (Even in Companies That Don’t Think They Have Them)

Most organisations claim to value collaboration. Yet many slowly drift into fragmented ways of working without noticing. The shift is subtle. It doesn’t happen because people want to isolate themselves; it happens because the structure around them pushes them in that direction.

1. Different incentives and different pressures

It’s easy to forget how different the day-to-day pressures are across a company.

Sales is often measured by monthly targets and pipeline health. Their job is to keep the business running. If numbers fall, the pressure is immediate.

Developers are measured by stability, quality, and long-term maintainability. They’re the ones who have to live with rushed decisions for years.

Marketing works on campaigns and timing. Their deadlines are real dates, often locked in far ahead.

Support teams deal with customers who are already upset, confused, or expecting quick fixes.

When these pressures collide, frustration builds — not because any team is doing something wrong, but because each team operates under incentives the others don’t fully see. When people don’t understand the pressures others face, the gaps are filled with assumptions.

2. Departments become experts in their own world

Specialists naturally spend most of their time with other specialists. Developers talk to developers. Designers talk to designers. Sales talks to sales. People build internal shorthand, habits, and shared ways of thinking.

This isn’t intentional isolation; it’s convenience. But as the internal languages solidify, it becomes harder to communicate across teams. The result is misunderstandings that look like disagreements but are often just different ways of framing the same problem.

3. Leadership unintentionally strengthens divides

Even well-meaning leaders can fuel silos by:

• reporting by department instead of cross-functional outcomes

• celebrating one department's output without considering dependencies

• escalating issues to the “heads of” rather than bringing teams together

• allowing timelines to be set in one area without consulting another

None of this is malicious. It’s simply easier to manage vertical teams than horizontal processes — but it reinforces the idea that each team is responsible only for its territory.

4. Poor handover points create resentment

A surprising amount of tension arises in the gaps between responsibilities:

• unclear briefs moving from sales to delivery

• discovery work starting too late

• decisions made without input from those who will implement them

• missing context

• rushed sign-off

• tasks lobbed over the fence with “please do this by tomorrow”

When a team constantly receives messy, incomplete, or last-minute work, they start to see the upstream group as the root cause of everything difficult.

5. Lack of a shared definition of success

One team might be aiming to increase speed. Another is aiming to increase stability. Another wants more visibility. Another wants to reduce risk. All of these are reasonable, but when they conflict, tension surfaces as blame.

Silos become entrenched when nobody has a shared, concrete answer to:

“What does a successful outcome look like — for the whole company, not just our department?”

Part 2: How Blame Culture Forms (and Why It’s So Hard to Break)

When silos harden, blame becomes an easy release valve. People begin to assume intent where there is none. They start drawing conclusions from incomplete information. They fill the gaps with suspicion rather than curiosity.

It usually unfolds in stages.

Stage 1: Frustration without context

You see the impact but not the cause.

A developer receives a rushed request the day before a release.

A designer is asked to change a finished layout because someone missed a stakeholder meeting.

A sales rep receives pushback on a promise they made in good faith.

The first few times, people accept it as part of the job. But patterns grow.

Stage 2: Patterns become narratives

Frustration starts to generalise:

• “Sales never give enough detail.”

• “Developers always say no.”

• “Designers take too long.”

• “Delivery makes everything more complicated than it needs to be.”

None of these statements are accurate. They’re simplifications used to explain friction without exploring what’s really happening.

Stage 3: Narratives become identity

Once a group internalises these stories, any future disagreement is interpreted through the same lens, no matter the circumstances. At this point, each department operates with a built-in defensiveness: “We’re doing our job properly — the problem is them.”

The longer this carries on, the harder it is to shift. Even when the original issues have been resolved, the stories linger.

Stage 4: Blame becomes default behaviour

This is the most destructive stage. Teams stop raising concerns early because they assume other teams won’t listen. Problems are discovered late. People protect their own workload instead of helping resolve shared issues. Leadership spends more time mediating disputes than setting direction.

By now, the teams aren’t just misaligned — they’re actively working around each other.

But this pattern isn’t inevitable. You can turn it around, and many companies do.

Part 3: What Healthy Cross-Team Collaboration Looks Like in Practice

A company is a system, not a collection of departments. When it works well, no team can succeed at the expense of another — their outcomes reinforce each other.

Healthy collaboration doesn’t look like endless meetings, unrealistic harmony, or forced positivity. It looks like clarity, honest discussion, and a shared sense of ownership.

Here’s what it looks like in practice.

1. Teams understand each other’s pressures and constraints

You don’t have to agree with another team’s priorities to respect them. But you do need to know how they work, how they’re measured, and what challenges they face.

For example:

• Developers understand why sales need timelines to stay fluid.

• Sales understand why developers need commitments to be stable.

• Marketing understands the work needed before a feature can be launched.

• Product understands why marketing needs clarity months in advance.

This doesn’t happen through one workshop. It happens through regular exposure and honest discussion.

2. Work is shaped together, not handed off

Most friction disappears when teams are involved early enough to influence decisions rather than being asked to “sign off” on something already decided. A shared planning conversation will always beat a polished but incomplete handover.

“Early” doesn’t mean weeks of preparation. It can mean a 30-minute chat before a proposal goes to a client or before a roadmap item becomes a commitment.

3. People speak plainly

When teams avoid jargon, they remove half of the friction automatically. The aim isn’t to simplify the work — it’s to make the intent clearer.

For example, developers shouldn’t be expected to guess what “a better user journey” means. Sales shouldn’t be expected to guess what “technical debt” involves. Marketing shouldn’t be expected to guess what “we can’t deliver this within the sprint” actually implies for launch timing.

Plain language closes the gaps that would otherwise be filled with assumptions.

4. Teams don’t hide problems

Blame cultures hide issues until they become crises. Healthy cultures raise issues while they’re still small.

Examples:

• A developer flags early that a feature is riskier than expected.

• Sales say a client request may exceed current capacity.

• Delivery clarifies that a timeline is tightening.

• Customer support flags recurring patterns before they become major concerns.

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Raising problems early only works when people know they won’t be punished for it.

5. Leaders model the behaviour

If leadership falls into the pattern of “sales are causing issues”, “delivery isn’t fast enough”, or “development need to work harder”, everyone else follows.

If leadership shows curiosity instead of blame, the company shifts with them.

Part 4: How to Unpack the Blame and Fix the System (Without Making It Personal)

Repairing broken dynamics requires more than encouraging “better collaboration”. It means changing the system that allowed the blame culture to grow. That starts with practical steps — the sort teams can act on immediately.

1. Map the real workflow, not the imagined one

Ask teams to walk through what actually happens when:

• a new opportunity arrives

• a feature is requested

• a campaign is planned

• a customer issue escalates

You’ll often discover:

• decisions made informally

• missing context

• bottlenecks that nobody owns

• unclear handover points

• quiet work carried by one person or team

• gaps that create duplicated effort

Once the reality is visible, it’s much easier to address the root causes instead of arguing about symptoms.

2. Clarify ownership of each stage

Ownership doesn’t need to be rigid, but it must be clear. If a team doesn’t know when they’re expected to participate, they arrive too late. If a team doesn’t know who approves something, they escalate everywhere.

Shared ownership works when you define:

• who leads

• who contributes

• who reviews

• who signs off

• who must be informed

This removes the “we were left out” problem that fuels resentment.

3. Replace assumptions with shared definitions

The same word can mean different things to different teams. These discrepancies cause endless arguments.

Common examples:

• “Ready”

• “Done”

• “High priority”

• “Critical issue”

• “Go live”

• “Prototype”

• “Tested”

• “Customer need”

Agreeing on definitions is dull, but it prevents weeks of misalignment.

4. Build small, cross-functional groups for work that crosses boundaries

The most reliable way to eliminate blame is to make teams solve problems together rather than for each other.

Create small working groups for initiatives that cut across departments. They don’t need to be permanent. They just need to reflect the real flow of work. When people spend time together on shared problems, it becomes much harder to blame each other.

5. Use structured decision-making, not informal conversations

Unstructured decisions often lead to:

• undocumented choices

• decisions changed later without explanation

• stakeholders surprised by outcomes

• work being redone

• teams feeling excluded

A simple, shared decision log solves half of these issues.

6. Bring data into conversations — but treat it as a tool, not a weapon

Analytics, operational data, and customer feedback help teams focus on problems rather than opinions. But data only helps when used to understand, not to accuse.

Healthy dynamics sound like:

• “The drop-off is high here — why do we think that is?”

• “Support tickets on this issue increased — what might be causing it?”

Unhealthy dynamics sound like:

• “Your team caused this.”

• “If you had done X, this wouldn’t have happened.”

Part 5: How to Reset Team Relationships (When Things Have Already Gone Wrong)

Sometimes you need to reset the relationship between teams entirely. That requires honesty and structure, not vague commitments to “work together better”.

1. Start with specific behaviours, not generalisations

General statements like “sales don’t give enough detail” or “dev say no to everything” aren’t useful. They create defensiveness. Instead, look at the actual points of friction:

• missed information

• unrealistic timelines

• slow responses

• unclear requirements

• lack of visibility

• conflicting priorities

Once you frame issues as behaviours, not identities, the discussion becomes constructive.

2. Acknowledge all the frustrations — including your own

People stop blaming each other when everyone feels heard. A structured conversation where each team can explain:

• what’s not working

• how it affects them

• what they need upstream

• what they can improve downstream

…usually breaks the stalemate.

3. Commit to one change per team, not dozens

A giant action plan will not solve entrenched tensions. Small changes will.

Examples:

• a weekly 15-minute planning sync

• a standardised ticket brief

• including sales in early technical discussions

• involving delivery earlier in opportunity scoping

• giving support a summary after each release

• visibility over design changes

• clearer timelines for revisions

Small adjustments can shift the entire dynamic.

4. Rotate responsibility for shared work

When one team always carries the burden of messy handovers, resentment builds.

Rotating responsibility — for meeting facilitation, backlog grooming, documentation, or customer insight sharing — helps everyone understand each other's world.

5. Establish regular, structured retrospectives across teams

Retrospectives often remain inside departments. But cross-team retrospectives — even once a quarter — uncover issues that would never appear in isolated discussions.

They work best when they focus on:

• what helped

• what hindered

• what surprised people

• what decisions created unintended consequences

• what small adjustments would improve the next cycle

The point isn’t blame — it’s learning.

Part 6: The Role of Leadership in Stabilising Team Dynamics

Even when teams improve their working relationship, silos creep back if leadership doesn’t reinforce the new habits.

Leaders need to:

1. Set goals that require cross-team collaboration

If goals are purely departmental, departments will retreat into their own priorities. Shared goals — with meaningful measures — force natural collaboration.

2. Give teams the time to talk to each other

Cross-team work takes time. If teams are constantly stretched, collaboration becomes a luxury rather than an expectation. Leaders must protect the time required to understand each other.

3. Celebrate integrated achievements, not individual outputs

When leaders praise “engineering for delivering X” or “sales for securing Y” without acknowledging the collaboration behind it, silos resurface.

It’s more helpful to celebrate:

• projects where departments solved problems together

• fast resolution due to good communication

• risks spotted early

• knowledge shared openly

Recognition shapes behaviour.

4. Challenge blame whenever it appears

The quickest way to prevent blame culture is for leaders to intervene early.

Not by shutting down the conversation.

But by asking:

• “What might have made their job harder?”

• “What information was missing?”

• “What led us to this place?”

• “What assumptions are we making?”

These questions pull people away from simple explanations and towards understanding the system.

5. Keep the structure flexible enough to evolve

Team dynamics change as companies grow. Processes that worked for ten people collapse at fifty. Leaders must adapt the structure before friction becomes chronic.

Part 7: The Real Outcome — A Company That Functions as One System

When teams understand each other, collaborate early, share ownership, and speak plainly, the company changes in ways that go far beyond “better teamwork”.

You see:

• fewer crises

• fewer late escalations

• faster and more thoughtful decisions

• less rework

• smoother handovers

• shared confidence in outcomes

• clearer priorities

• calmer work

• more consistent delivery

More importantly, people feel less defensive and more inclined to help each other. The narrative shifts from “their fault” to “how do we fix this?”.

That’s when the company starts to operate as a single organism rather than a cluster of departments.

And the interesting thing? When teams stop blaming each other, problems don’t disappear. They simply become easier to solve, because people are finally willing to solve them together.