Two feuding units are given a goal neither can reach alone and both want, such as winning a contested account, so cooperating becomes the way each gets what it needs.
An example
Sales and engineering at a logistics software startup were barely speaking six months after it closed its first large funding round. Sales blamed engineering for missed release dates; engineering blamed sales for promising features that did not exist. The chief executive stopped refereeing. She put both leads in a room with the request for proposal from a national grocery chain, the account the board had asked about at every meeting. Winning it required a working integration with the chain's ordering system, demonstrated live in ten weeks, and a pricing model sales would have to defend. Neither team could win it alone. She made them joint owners of the bid, with one shared review every Friday. They built the demo together, argued about scope in the room instead of in the hallways, and won the account in the final round.
Why it works
Groups competing for scarce rewards turn hostile, and putting them in the same room does not fix it. A goal both want and neither can reach alone changes the arithmetic: the only way each side gets what it needs is through the other, so cooperation looks better and the feud gets costlier. Cooperation, once started, also tends to draw more of it. It depends on the goal being real, valued by both sides, and truly out of reach alone, with shared credit when it is met.
The thinking behind it
Muzafer Sherif Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation: The Robbers Cave Experiment (1961) reports that two groups competing for prizes only one could win grew hostile, that contact alone did not help, and that superordinate goals, problems both cared about and neither could solve alone, reduced the hostility. Gina Perry's The Lost Boys (2018) argues that heavy staff intervention shaped these results, so the finding is contested. The bid for one shared account is a superordinate goal set inside a company.
Morton Deutsch The Resolution of Conflict: Constructive and Destructive Processes (1973) states what Deutsch called the crude law of social relations: the characteristic effects of a relationship tend to elicit that relationship, so cooperative moves tend to draw cooperation and competitive ones draw competition. A joint bid forces a first round of cooperation between feuding teams, and a run of shared goals keeps that pattern going.
When it fits
Feuds between units that both depend on the same outcome are the setting: sales and product, two plants, a field team and headquarters. You need the authority to set the goal and assign joint ownership, a goal both sides care about, and a way to give both credit when it is met.
How to use it well
Pick a goal that both sides want badly and neither can reach alone: a contested account, a launch date, a crisis they both own.
- Make it concrete, with a date and a measure of success.
- Assign joint ownership, with one shared review where problems are raised in front of both.
- Split the work so each side depends on the other's part.
- When it is reached, credit both sides publicly and equally.
Follow it with a second shared goal. One win can ease a feud, and a run of them changes how the units work together.
What it costs and where it backfires
If the goal is missed, each side may blame the other more than before. A trivial goal is quickly seen through, and one shared win will not undo years of rivalry by itself. A fictional goal, or a shared threat invented to manage people, is deception, and it poisons the next real goal you set.
When it is used on you
Check that the goal is real and that the credit will be shared when you are told to work toward it with a unit you are fighting. Ask for joint ownership in writing, with a shared measure. Then work the goal, because refusing makes your unit look like the problem.