Our Head of Sales and Head of Operations have an escalating peer feud where Sales blames Operations for poor delivery and Operations blames Sales for overpromising. How do we permanently resolve this friction?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

This classic feud happens when seats lack absolute clarity on handoffs or when the leadership team fails to IDS the root cause together. Blaming each other is a symptom of misaligned metrics and poor cross-functional accountability.

Start by looking at your Accountability Chart. Do the five core roles for Sales and the five core roles for Operations clearly delineate where the customer handoff occurs? If sales owns closing the deal, what exact criteria define a qualified handoff to operations? If operations owns client fulfillment, what exact capacity constraints must sales respect?

Bring both leaders into a dedicated session or address it directly in your weekly Level 10 Meeting. Put the issue on the IDS board as a structural process failure, not a personality clash. Force them to define the exact rules of engagement. Sales cannot sell non-standard deliverables without prior operational sign-off, and operations cannot reject closed business that meets documented standards.

Next, align their incentives. If sales gets paid purely on closed revenue regardless of churn or operational strain, and operations is measured solely on margin, you have engineered peer conflict. Add a shared metric to the Scorecard, such as net revenue retention or customer satisfaction, that requires both leaders to win or lose together.

Make it clear that finger-pointing stops immediately. They are members of the leadership team first and functional department heads second. If they cannot resolve cross-functional friction constructively, one or both of them do not belong in their seats.