365 Days of Stories – Day 18: Navigating Conflicts – First the Customer, Now the Architects
So far, we’ve tackled misaligned priorities (CEO vs. BU leaders), billing, and meeting constraints.
I had to pick my battles. I knew I couldn’t win them all.
Step 1: The CEO vs. BU Leaders Conflict
The issue wasn’t that BU leaders ignored CEO priorities—they had additional projects they were equally invested in.
🔹 Key Realization: ✔ The CEO focused on high-impact, org-wide initiatives. ✔ BU leaders focused on their own business unit goals. ✔ They weren’t opposing the CEO; they just didn’t want their priorities deprioritized.
This meant we had to manage both CEO priorities and BU-level initiatives simultaneously—a near-impossible balancing act.
Step 2: Solving the In-Person Meeting Problem One of the biggest operational blockers was weekly meetings. The customer required me and my Tech Leads to attend multiple in-person meetings at different locations—consuming valuable time needed for execution.
📍 The Problem: ✔ We were accountable to five BU leaders - three demanded in-person meetings, and two were fine with remote. ✔ In person meetings were on different days, consuming three full days a week just for travel.
📍 The Proposal: 💡 We proposed consolidating all three in-person meetings into one day, freeing up four full days per week for delivery.
🚀 Result: The customer agreed! A small but crucial win, giving us much-needed breathing space.
Step 3: Internal Bottlenecks – The Architect Roadblock
With more execution time, our own architect delays in approvals and lack of involvement during development slowed projects even more.
For the CEO, only go-live dates mattered.
For us, every phase was stuck in approval loops, slowing down progress.
The Architect Problem: 🔹 Reported to another leader, not directly to me. 🔹 Focused only on design approvals—not project delivery. 🔹 Had no deadlines, while we were under immense pressure to deliver. 🔹 Were not involved in development but still controlled post-development approvals. 🔹 We needed them hands-on—not just reviewing designs but helping resolve issues and pushing projects forward.
🚧 The Challenge? They weren’t aligned with our urgency.
Our architects were senior, highly skilled professionals, but they saw their role as purely design-focused. Meanwhile, I needed them to partner with Tech Leads and development teams, staying engaged throughout the project lifecycle—not just signing off at the end.
Now, we were navigating conflicts both externally (customer challenges) and internally (team misalignment).
The Bigger Question How do you get teams to align when their incentives don’t match?
That’s for tomorrow.
👉 Have you ever faced internal roadblocks that slowed down urgent deliverables? How did you navigate them? Drop your thoughts in the comments!
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