When you’re on the ground floor of a company, it’s easy to imagine that somewhere up top there’s a team of people who really know what they’re doing. That there’s a master plan. That the processes are clear. That strategy is airtight. That someone, somewhere, has it all figured out.
But the closer you get to leadership, the more you realize something few people talk about: most organizations are winging it—some more successfully than others.
This isn’t a cynical take. It’s a reality I’ve slowly come to accept through personal experience, conversations with colleagues, and now, supported by research. And while it might seem bleak at first, there’s actually a lot of hope hidden in this truth—because awareness is the first step toward doing better.
Dysfunction Is the Norm, Not the Exception
Behnam Tabrizi, a best-selling author and Stanford faculty member, studied 95 cross-functional teams across 25 leading companies. What he found was eye-opening: nearly 75% of these teams were dysfunctional. They failed at least three of five key organizational criteria:
- Meeting a planned budget
- Staying on schedule
- Adhering to specifications
- Meeting customer expectations
- Maintaining alignment with corporate goals
These aren’t small hiccups. These are fundamental pillars of project and team success. So what’s going wrong?
Tabrizi points to a few core issues: unclear governance, a lack of accountability, vague goals, and a general failure to prioritize the success of cross-functional projects. In short, the dysfunction isn’t about bad people—it’s about broken systems.
And that tracks with what I’ve seen.
I once had a coworker, Matt, who went on to start his own independent consulting group. He helps companies realign around user experience and organizational design. When he finally got a seat at the leadership table at our old firm—something he had worked incredibly hard for—he was disappointed. He found that many leaders didn’t actually know what was going on. They weren’t lazy or incompetent, just overwhelmed, distracted, and sometimes afraid of the risks that come with real accountability.
This realization was jarring for him—and later, for me. As I’ve gotten closer to leadership myself, I’ve started to see the same patterns. The lack of clarity. The ad hoc decision-making. The overreliance on individual effort to keep things moving.
Why Cross-Functional Teams Struggle
Cross-functional teams are supposed to be the solution to siloed thinking. In theory, they bring together diverse expertise to solve complex problems more effectively. But without the right structure, they often collapse under their own weight. Tabrizi recommends three corrective actions:
1. Increase Transparency and Accountability
Every team needs a designated decision-maker who’s empowered to steer the ship and resolve conflicts. Without that, competing priorities from different departments will always win out over shared team goals.
2. Bridge Data Silos
Different departments (and especially different companies) often use different tools, which leads to fragmented data and inefficiencies. When people are stuck emailing spreadsheets back and forth, the collaboration breaks down. Unified systems and shared tools are essential.
3. Eliminate Digital Friction
According to Gartner, 94% of employees experience digital friction—unnecessary effort caused by clunky or disconnected technology. If teams are spending more time fighting their tools than doing their work, it’s no wonder they struggle. Standardization and automation are key.
If you don’t already have a system that can manage and accelerate processes across departments or even companies, Tabrizi suggests it might be time to implement a multi-party workflow orchestration platform like Pipelineapp.io.
Still Naïve Enough to Try
A friend of mine—Brad—once told me something after I got promoted to middle management: “Middle management isn’t put there to change anything.”
That stung. I had hoped to make things better for the people I managed. To improve the company, even in small ways. And maybe that was naïve. But even now, I still hold onto the belief that change is possible, even if it’s incremental.
Because here’s the thing: most companies succeed not because they’re flawless, but because people care enough to make things work. They push through ambiguity, disorganization, and miscommunication because they believe in the mission—or at least in each other.
So no, the top doesn’t always have it figured out. The processes aren’t always clear. The teams aren’t always aligned. But that doesn’t mean we stop trying. We just have to be more honest about where we are—and more deliberate about where we’re going.
Wisdom may come with age, but fresh perspectives often come from the ground floor. We need both. And we need systems that don’t just reward survival in dysfunction but empower people to do their best work—together.
If your teams are feeling the friction, maybe it’s time to reexamine the systems you’re relying on. Because people are not the problem—broken processes are.