The impact of missing launch dates or deadlines go way beyond simply missing a date. It is a blow to the internal trust within the company.

When done once to a new team member, it creates cracks in an individual’s trust in the organization.
When repeated or seen many times by a grizzled IC, it can shatter it.

The camel’s back is not broken by the one straw placed on top. It is broken by the thousand underneath it.

The placement of straws is not the result of any 1 individual. There is no single place to point a finger. One of the ways that I’ve felt it is as work that has gotten “thrown over the wall” and deemed as “done”. When ICs aren’t in the key cross functional meetings, when it’s only the leads, there are key components that often don’t get surfaced before it is complete. A lot gets lost in translation, and a huge one is not knowing what the other teams are contesting against.

When the full picture isn’t known - assumptions and stories often complete it. As humans, being human, we tend to fill that picture with things that aren’t exactly positive. The more that trust erodes, the less positive those assumptions and stories are. This hurts our productivity, ingenuity, morale and overall care about work. This leads to burnout and ultimately greatly hurts the org.

I’ve seen and experienced this go in both ways.
The beauty that arises when teams come together - a feeling of togetherness, a widened scope of what is going on in the org, a looking out for each other; and also the pain of disjointedness - feeling siloed, not caring what is going on in the org, barely knowing what is going on in my own team.

The answer isn’t having entire teams in every cross functional meeting, that is not only expensive but also often boring and feels like a waste of time.

I believe that alleviating this is simultaneously an art and a science.

Scientifically
I find cross functional kick off meetings to be invaluable at the beginning of an initiative, and project huddles as it is on going. Huddles are a space for feedback and knowledge spread whenever a team is about to deliver a significant piece of work. Instead of tossing it over the wall via a slack message to a team channel, for it to actually be presented not as final, but as almost there to the team they are handing it off to. This enables space for feedback, iteration and the potential to cut scope.

The art form
Is in sensing the individual and the collective. When an individual has more to say but is holding back. The tone change when asking a question about a feature, the sudden change in posture when something is presented, the glances between teammates. Along with the feeling of completion or incompletion, the sensation when everyone is on the same page or when things are disjointed.

If you’re leading a team and feel that work keeps slipping through the cracks, deadlines are being missed and the morale of your team could be higher - reach out, I’m curious about what is going on, let’s chat!