Where two functions keep colliding, a manager offers to own the coordination between them, and, as the person who reconciles their plans, gains a voice in both.
An example
New product designs at an orthopedic implant maker kept reaching the plant late and hard to build, and every launch began with a fight between product design and manufacturing. A manufacturing engineering manager offered the vice president of operations to own the handoff. She set up a design-transfer review at three points in each project, wrote the checklist both sides signed, and kept one joint schedule. She spent half her week with the designers and half on the plant floor. Within a year, launch delays had shrunk from months to weeks, and designers started calling her before they froze a design. When the company planned its next platform, she was asked to sit in both the product roadmap meetings and the plant capacity review.
Why it works
Organizations split work into specialized units that see the world differently, and someone has to link them. The person who reconciles their plans gains influence through expertise in both and a balanced outlook neither side has, so their input looks better and is easier for each side to accept, and both come to rely on them. It depends on the integrator understanding both functions well, staying even-handed, and actually making the collisions less costly.
The thinking behind it
Jay W. Lorsch Organization and Environment: Managing Differentiation and Integration (1967), by Lawrence and Lorsch, found that units facing different parts of the environment develop different goals and styles, and that high-performing firms matched this with strong integration; the more the units differed, the more they needed dedicated integrating roles. Design and manufacturing in an implant maker differ in exactly this way, which is why the handoff needed an owner.
Paul R. Lawrence New Management Job: The Integrator (1967), a Harvard Business Review article by Lawrence and Lorsch, describes the manager whose job is to coordinate departments that pull in different directions. Secondary summaries report that effective integrators had a balanced orientation, were seen as expert, and drew influence from that knowledge more than from rank. That is the source of the voice in both functions this page describes.
When it fits
Recurring collisions between two functions create the opening: design and manufacturing, sales and operations, product and support. You need credibility with both sides, the time to spend in both, and the backing of an executive who wants the collisions to stop.
How to use it well
Offer to own the coordination, with a specific scope: the handoff, the joint schedule, the shared review.
- Learn the other function's work well enough to speak its language.
- Set up a simple joint process, with points where both sides sign off.
- Stay even-handed; side with one function every time and the other stops trusting you.
- Report results to the executive who sponsored the role.
- Take disputes to that executive only after both sides have put their case to you.
Spend real time with both. An integrator who sits with one side is seen as its agent.
What it costs and where it backfires
The role takes time and pulls you away from your own function, and both sides may blame you when collisions happen. Lean toward one side and the other will route around you. Using the role to steer both functions toward your own agenda without saying so is the line; once that is found out, both sides cut you out.
When it is used on you
Get the scope in writing, and a seat in the joint process, when someone offers to coordinate between your function and another. Hold them to even-handedness. If they work well, the collisions drop, and that serves you as much as them.