What awkward interactions are telling you
This is the second post in my "From awkward to aligned" series.
Not all awkwardness is created equal. Some team tensions are signs of unclear responsibilities. Others point to over-dependence, broken trust, or missing capabilities. If you want to improve the way your organization works, you need to get better at reading the signals, especially the awkward ones. A single awkward meeting might just be a one-off, but if it continues to repeat, then it’s worth paying attention to. Awkward interactions that recur frequently tend to cluster around specific pain points, and these patterns can reveal where your current setup is breaking down.
This post explores how to interpret some common patterns of awkwardness so you can uncover what they’re really telling you about how your teams and structures are functioning.
Common Forms of Awkwardness (and What They Might Reveal)
Here are a few familiar patterns, along with the deeper structural clues they often point to:
1. Endless Handoffs
Multiple handovers between teams
"We can't get this done without going through another team first."
You’ve probably heard this in retros, stand-ups, or quiet frustrations in hallway chats. On the surface, it sounds like a coordination issue, one team needing something from another. However, when it continues to happen, it often points to something deeper.
Endless handoffs often signal that the current team boundaries aren’t aligned with how value flows through the organization. Instead of owning a coherent slice of the user journey or domain, teams are split in ways that create blocking or slowing dependency chains. The result is that delivery slows down, context gets lost in translation, and ownership becomes murky.
It can also mean the boundaries between domains are overlapping, or worse, undefined. When multiple teams share partial responsibility for a capability, no one feels fully accountable, which can result in slow progress.
Sometimes, it’s not even about the teams themselves; it’s the broader system design. If the team structure doesn’t reflect the shape of your value streams, then friction is inevitable, and you end up optimizing around internal functions, rather than the flow of value.
2. Sync Overload
Continuous synchronization between teams
"We need four teams on every call just to make a decision."
When multiple teams are needed just to make what should be a straightforward decision, it’s usually a sign that the current structure is creating unnecessary interdependence. This kind of situation can become normalised over time, with more syncs and more alignment sessions, but the underlying issue often goes unaddressed.
In many cases, the problem is excessive coupling between teams. The work requires so much back-and-forth because responsibilities and capabilities are spread too thinly across too many groups. Rather than enabling autonomy, the structure creates a constant need for coordination.
Sometimes the issue isn’t just how the teams are set up, but how decisions are framed. If it’s unclear which team is actually responsible for a given outcome, or if multiple teams feel partly accountable, decisions tend to get deferred, escalated, or slowed down. It’s not always a lack of willingness; it’s a lack of clarity.
This type of pattern also suggests ambiguous ownership. Work that crosses team boundaries without a clearly defined lead often results in decisions being made by committee, which tends to slow down the process and dilute accountability.
If you find teams repeatedly needing to coordinate just to take a step forward, it may be time to explore whether the current distribution of responsibilities is hindering or helping their ability to act with confidence.
3. Struggling to Collaborate Effectively
Painful collaboration between teams
"We’re collaborating, but it’s slow, stressful, and full of conflict."
Collaboration is often seen as a default good, but not all collaboration is healthy or productive. When working together feels harder than it should, tensions run high, and each step forward seems to require some form of negotiation, it’s worth stepping back to examine what’s really going on.
One common cause is a mismatch in expectations. If each team assumes the other is responsible for different parts of the work, or if there’s no shared understanding of the intended outcome, it’s easy for frustration to build up. Misunderstandings aren’t always visible until deadlines get close or priorities clash.
Another factor is the lack of a clearly defined interface between teams. Without agreed-upon ways of working or explicit boundaries, collaboration becomes ad hoc and reactive. People often rely on individual relationships rather than stable patterns of interaction, which can lead to inconsistency and duplication of effort.
Sometimes the issue isn’t with the people or the intent, but with the choice to collaborate in the first place. Some work benefits from close, joint problem-solving. Other situations are better served by well-scoped service relationships or time-limited support. If the wrong type of interaction is being applied, the result can feel more like friction than flow.
When collaboration starts to feel like it is sucking all your energy rather than being an enabler, it's usually a sign that something about the setup needs to change, whether that’s clarifying responsibilities, agreeing on interaction patterns, or finding a more effective way to work together.
4. No One Really Owns This
Lack of clear ownership of capabilities
"It keeps falling through the cracks, everyone assumes someone else has it."
This kind of situation is more common than it might appear. A task, capability, or responsibility emerges, but no one is explicitly responsible for it. Over time, people start to notice the gaps, but still nothing gets picked up with any consistency.
Often, this is a sign that something important hasn’t been deliberately assigned to a team or role. It might have started as a one-off or a shared effort, but as it grows in complexity or importance, the lack of clear ownership becomes a problem.
Sometimes, responsibility is so thinly spread across multiple teams that everyone feels slightly involved, but no one feels truly accountable. This kind of diffuse ownership leads to hesitation, duplication, or work simply being left undone. Teams end up focusing on what they know is theirs, while the shared parts get quietly left alone.
In other cases, the work isn’t seen as core to anyone’s mission. It is often treated as overhead or something to be done “if there’s time,” which usually means it doesn’t get done at all. This is especially common with things like internal tools, shared documentation, or glue work that supports delivery but isn’t owned as a product or service.
If you’re hearing phrases like “I thought they had it” or noticing recurring issues that don’t seem to land anywhere, it might be time to step back and ask whether you should be making ownership explicit.
5. We Work Around, Not With
Unnecessary duplication of the same capabilities
"It’s easier to build our own version than wait on them."
When teams start building their own versions of something that already exists elsewhere in the organization, it’s rarely just about speed or convenience. More often, it’s a signal that something in the relationship isn’t working any more or hasn’t been for a while.
In many cases, this kind of behaviour stems from broken trust. Perhaps a dependency was consistently delivered late, or the support wasn't responsive when it mattered. Over time, the team stops asking and starts avoiding. Workarounds become the default behaviour.
It can also point to a service or platform that no longer meets the needs of the people it’s meant to support. The original intent may have been sound, but priorities have shifted, constraints have changed, and the interface between provider and consumer hasn’t kept pace. What was once a useful shared capability now feels like a blocker.
Sometimes, the underlying issue is that the dependency was never designed to be responsive in the way that downstream teams need. Expectations haven’t been aligned, and there’s no clear way to escalate or adapt when things go wrong.
When teams choose to work around each other, it’s not always an act of rebellion. More often, it’s a form of self-preservation. But these decisions come at a cost, duplicate effort, inconsistent experiences, and fractured ownership.
If you’re seeing signs that teams are quietly bypassing shared services or internal platforms, it’s worth asking what need is no longer being met and what might be done to rebuild the relationship in a more sustainable way.
Looking Beneath the Surface
It’s easy to write off awkward team interactions as personality clashes or temporary process issues. They often show up as friction in meetings, delays in delivery, or low-level frustration between groups. On the surface, they can seem like isolated incidents.
But when these patterns persist, they’re usually telling us something more fundamental about how the organisation is structured, or how well that structure supports the way work actually happens. These moments can help us see:
Where the flow of value is being interrupted or slowed
Where the current team design no longer reflects how value is delivered
Where collaboration is compensating for a deeper structural misalignment
Rather than treating them as background noise, we can choose to treat them as useful input, early signs that something might need to shift. They offer an opportunity to explore, reflect, and take action before things become more deeply embedded or harder to unwind.
By paying attention to where the tension is showing up, we give ourselves a better chance of improving how teams interact, make decisions, and deliver value.
What to Pay Attention To
Some forms of awkwardness are easy to spot, while others sit quietly in the background, becoming an integral part of how work gets done without ever being questioned. However, over time, patterns emerge, suggesting that something deeper might be at play.
We need to pay attention to these when:
The same issue comes up again and again, not just within one team but across multiple areas
Teams are creating their own workarounds instead of relying on shared services or expected processes
Delays, handoffs, or rework are becoming common parts of delivery, not occasional exceptions
People seem unclear, frustrated, or disengaged when working across boundaries
These aren’t just signs of ineffective collaboration. More often, they point to a misalignment in structure, ownership, or expectations, issues that can’t be resolved through better communication alone.
If any of this feels familiar, you’re probably looking at more than just coordination noise. You’re seeing a signal that might be telling you it’s time to pause, reflect, and reconsider how things are currently set up.
In the next post, we’ll look at how to decide whether a signal is worth acting on and how to frame a response that’s safe to try and easy to learn from.
If you would like help identifying and addressing some of the awkward interactions within your organization or teams, feel free to connect and DM me.
