Navigating “Us vs Them”

The merger of the top two market leaders was a strong strategic move. Their IP fit. Their solutions complemented each other. Their combined customer base created a real opportunity. Leadership invested heavily in aligning on strategy and vision.

On paper, the work was done.

About six months in, delivery began to slow.

Nothing dramatic at first. Just small delays. A few missed handoffs. Customers started to notice. Confidence wavered. The remaining competition did too, and moved quickly to exploit it.

Two teams that had previously competed were now responsible for a shared product.

One came from a design-led culture shaped by customer intimacy. Continuous feedback. Instinctive collaboration. Fast learning loops. The other was engineering-driven. Built for scale. Focused on security, reliability, and structure as complexity increased.

Both approaches had earned their place.

No one was wrong.

But the new product vision didn't sit right with anyone —yet.

What showed up wasn’t open conflict. It was quieter than that. Decisions slowed. Conversations repeated themselves. Work required more explanation than it used to. Slight hesitations began to stack.

From the outside, the process looked careful. Even disciplined.

From the inside, it felt constrained.

Customers felt it too. A request that should have moved quickly got caught in layers of checks and safeguards. The intent was sound. The experience wasn’t. Frustration crept in, not because quality was lacking, but because momentum was.

Internally, the friction mainly stayed unspoken. Each team was doing what had always worked for them. The gap lived in the space between those instincts.

The work didn’t start by asking people to align or collaborate harder. It started by paying attention to how assumptions about customers, speed, and risk were shaping everyday decisions.

Rapid prototypes became the turning point.

In one session, teams worked side by side with customers to explore how data could be surfaced through an existing digital property. What emerged was a way to close the gap between licensing and real customer value without compromising security. A slight design pivot changed how transparency was handled. Suddenly, both teams could see a shared path forward.

The prototypes gave people something tangible to respond to. Not opinions. Not positions. Actual artifacts that made differences visible without turning them into sides.

The conversation shifted.

Instead of debating intent, teams could see where cohesion broke down in practice. It became easier to agree on what to stop doing. And that clarity mattered more than it seemed at first.

Once teams could name what not to pursue, leaders could see what they could do next without forcing consensus. Decisions accelerated. Communication tightened. Leadership no longer had to mediate every step forward.

Momentum returned.

Not because everyone agreed.

But because people could move together again, even while holding different perspectives.

This kind of work happens after a deal is declared complete, but before results begin to slide. In that narrow window, when progress hasn’t failed but has clearly slowed, coherence matters most.

That’s where this work lives.