Taking over another department's work one small handoff at a time, each offered as help or an efficiency, a department ends up holding the function without a formal reorganization.
Borderline: whether this move is justified depends on the situation, and only the person in it can judge.
An example
Renewals, the head of customer success at a human-resources software company believed, belonged with her team, which already tracked every account's health. Sales owned renewals and had no interest in giving them up. During a busy fourth quarter she offered to handle renewals under $20,000 so account executives could focus on new deals, and the sales leader agreed. The next spring she offered to take renewal forecasting, since her team produced the health scores it depended on. Each handoff came with a short written note to the sales leader and the chief revenue officer describing what had moved and how it was performing. Renewal rates on the accounts her team handled rose six points. A year in, she asked the revenue chief to make the arrangement formal, with a charter change and a revised compensation plan. The sales leader did not object, since most of the work had already moved.
Why it works
Each handoff is framed as a favor, a temporary measure, or relief during a busy period, so saying yes looks easier and carries no apparent political cost. Refusing any single handoff looks costlier, because the other leader seems territorial over a trivial matter, and repeated refusals earn a reputation as a bottleneck. It runs on better access to leadership than the other department has, a pace slow enough that no single ask triggers alarm, and another leader without the standing or attention to map the trajectory.
The thinking behind it
Thomas C. Schelling Schelling's Arms and Influence (1966) describes salami tactics, crossing a line in slices each too small to justify a response. Each handoff of renewal work is a slice the sales leader has no reason to fight. The written note at every handoff makes the slices visible, so the other leader can draw a line while doing so is still cheap, which is what keeps the move clean.
Jeffrey Pfeffer Pfeffer's The External Control of Organizations: A Resource Dependence Perspective (1978) holds that control of a resource others need confers power over them. Once customer success produces the renewal forecast, sales depends on it for a number it needs, and power shifts before any reorganization. Formalizing the arrangement later turns that dependence into authority on the record.
When it fits
Your department should be better placed to do the adjacent work, the other department stretched, and a formal reorganization likely to be fought on territory instead of merits. You need a working relationship with leadership, the capacity to take the work on well, and results you can show from each handoff.
How to use it well
- Offer to take specific, bounded work when the other team is stretched, and do it better than it was done.
- Write a short note to both leaders at each handoff, saying what moved and how it is performing.
- Measure results on the transferred work and share them.
- Once the arrangement is real, ask for it to be formalized in a charter or reorganization, with the other leader in the room.
The written record is what keeps this clean. It lets the other leader see the trajectory and object while objecting is still cheap, and it gives the eventual formal change a factual basis.
What it costs and where it backfires
Expect the other leader to feel outmaneuvered and to become a lasting rival. If you take work you cannot do well, the failures come back with your name on them. Offering a temporary favor you intend to keep, or using leadership cover to make refusal costly, is a takeover by stealth, and its discovery will cost you more than the function was worth.
When it is used on you
Another team that keeps offering to pick up pieces of your work deserves a written ledger: record every handoff, and force an explicit boundary conversation early, while the original line is still clear. Ask for regular charter reviews that catch cumulative drift, and for any permanent transfer to go through a formal decision.