Someone pushing a change widens rifts that already exist between departments, so the people who would oppose it spend their energy distrusting each other and never present a united front.
An example
Nineteen years between underwriting and claims had given a regional insurer's deputy claims director a good ear for both sides. In March, during a project to consolidate the claims systems, the deputy noticed something odd: underwriting believed claims had asked to delay the cutover, and claims believed underwriting had asked for it. Both accounts traced back to the transformation lead, who had met each head separately the week before. An argument about reserve calculations, settled years earlier, came back in two budget meetings within four days. The joint memo the two heads had been drafting against the vendor choice stalled while they traded emails about reserves. The vendor contract went to the executive committee unopposed and was signed in April. In May the deputy put the two heads in a room with both versions of the story, and the next conversation each of them had was with the transformation lead.
Why it works
The move works on the opposition's ability to coordinate and leaves the case for the change untouched. Opposing looks worse because a coalition whose members suspect each other cannot promise a single demand, so its likely payoff falls. It looks costlier because joining a department you have been taught to distrust reads as betrayal to your own people. The change looks better by contrast, with its sponsor cast as the calm hand above routine friction. It depends on seams that already exist, on control of what each side hears, and on deniability. Once the orchestration shows, the grievance turns on its author, and the opposition often ends up more united than before.
The thinking behind it
Mancur Olson Mancur Olson's The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups (1965) argues that members of a large group who would all gain from a shared goal have little individual reason to pay for it, so large groups often fail to act while small, concentrated ones succeed. Divide and conquer works on exactly this weakness: every rift between departments raises the cost of coordinating, and an opposition busy policing itself never becomes the organized group it would need to be.
Mark Granovetter In The Strength of Weak Ties (1973), Mark Granovetter showed that acquaintances who span separate groups carry new information between them, more than close friends do. The move depends on controlling what each department hears, so it fails when someone with ties on both sides compares the accounts. That is why the long-tenured connector trusted by both departments is the strongest defense on this page.
Niccolò Machiavelli In The Prince (1532), Machiavelli reports the old practice of ruling subject towns by keeping factions among them and rejects it: "I do not believe that factions can ever be of use," because divided cities are quickly lost when an enemy approaches. The same weakness shows inside a company. Departments set against each other cannot act together when it matters, and the person who split them has weakened the whole organization along with the opposition.
Warning signs
Two departments hold contradictory versions of the same decision, and each version leads back to one intermediary. A grievance that had been dormant for years resurfaces in two forums within days. Coalition meetings turn into members checking each other's loyalty, drafts leak, and side deals are suspected. Meanwhile one agenda moves forward without anyone making the argument for it in an open meeting.
How to defend yourself
Compare notes directly with the other department before you act on anything you were told about them. Put the two accounts side by side, with dates and who said what.
- Ask a long-tenured connector trusted on both sides to broker the meeting. Such a person can repair links faster than new suspicion arrives.
- Ask, out loud, why an agenda is advancing while nobody argues for it on the merits. When nobody makes the case, the case is usually weak.
- Once the source is clear, reconcile with your rival first and confront the intermediary second, with the record in hand.
How a leader shuts it down
Keep information between departments flowing through channels where accounts can be compared: joint briefings, shared minutes, and decisions recorded once for everyone. Protect and promote the connectors who hold trust on both sides of old seams. Make sponsors argue their proposals in open forums, and treat a proposal that advances only while its opponents fight each other as one that has not yet been argued.