I’ve seen this exact scenario in startups.
The support team’s crushing tickets.
Sales is chasing quota.
Devs are sprinting toward the next release.
And yet, somehow revenue’s flat, morale’s dipping, and no one knows why.
It’s not about laziness. It’s not incompetence.
It’s focus. Too much focus.
That image?
It’s what happens when everyone stays in their lane so hard, they stop looking at the road ahead. Or to the side. Or anywhere but their own dashboard.
You ask someone, “How’s the company doing?”
They’ll tell you, “My OKRs are green.”
But revenue doesn’t care if your OKRs are green. Burn doesn’t care if you hit your Jira points.
Sometimes the company’s leaking and no one notices—because each team thinks it’s someone else’s job to check the waterline.
So here’s the fix.
Every 2 weeks, one person from each team answers:
- What’s working, but feels harder than it should?
- What are customers actually confused about?
- What feels off, but isn’t in our metrics?
Not to update leadership. To update each other.
Because cross-functional awareness isn’t a process. It’s a culture. And if your best people are too heads-down to notice the company veering off-course, no dashboard’s going to save you.
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