Our VP of Customer Success and our VP of Product are constantly blaming each other for our high churn rate, turning our leadership meetings into a finger-pointing exercise. How do we get them to stop playing defense and take shared ownership of customer retention?

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

When peer conflict turns into a blame game, it is a clear sign that your leadership team is functioning as a group of siloed department heads rather than a cohesive unit. To break this defensive posturing, you must shift their focus to the collective good of the organization.

Start by addressing this issue directly during the IDS® portion of your next Level 10 Meeting™. Do not let them debate specific, isolated customer complaints. Instead, map out the process on the Accountability Chart. Clearly define where the handoff occurs between product development and customer success.

If the roles are clear but the friction remains, the problem is a lack of trust. Healthy conflict is about finding the right solution, while unhealthy conflict is about saving face. Force both leaders to sit down and co-create a joint Rock focused on reducing churn. This binds their success together. If the churn rate improves, they both win. If it fails, they both own the failure.

As a leadership team, your first loyalty must be to the team you sit on, not the department you run. If these two executives cannot put their egos aside to solve systemic issues, they are showing you they do not GWC™ their seats. You must protect the organization by demanding collaboration or replacing the bottleneck.