This Accidental Adversaries example consists of two groups, Sales and Service, which working in the collaborative fashion have tremendous potential. Yet, operating from their own myopic unenlightened self-perspective, over time they defeat each other's, and eventually their own, success.
Sales's success leads to appropriate Sales's account Services positioning. What this means is that the appropriate expectations regarding services are established within the account when it's sold, which then supports Service's success. Service's success then leads to appropriate Service's account Sales positioning. This means preparing the account for further sales. This action leads to further Sales's success. This sequence represents a virtuous reinforcing loop promoting a continued increase in the success of both Sale and Service.
Service's evangelism essentially ensure successful customer implementation and Service's success, which further promotes Service's evangelism. Sale's selling focus, promoted by the fact that they're only compensated for sales and not service, essentially ensures Sale's success, which in turn promotes Sales's selling focus.
Now when we look a little deeper we find that Sales's selling
focus detracts from Sale's account Services positioning
by discounting the level of effort and time required for implementation.
Sales's selling focus also serves to promote Service's
evangelism to compensate for Sales's selling focus.
On the other side of the coin, since there are no one sided coins,
Service's evangelism detracts from Service's account
Sales positioning by extending the implementation cycle. Let's
face it, it takes a long time to create converts. Service's
evangelism also promotes Sales's selling focus to compensate
for Service's evangelism.
As it turns out, the interactions described above also create
two additional insidious balancing loops and two viscous reinforcing
loops. These loops simply serve to further degrade the overall
result of the structure.
Reality depends on who believes it, while truth doesn't care who believes it.