Transforming Team Collaboration in a Fortune 50 Healthcare Company
For a Fortune 50 healthcare company, product strategy and technology should be natural partners. Strategy defines where the business needs to go; technology builds the capabilities to get there. Instead, the two functions often worked in parallel, creating friction that slowed execution in a fast-moving, highly regulated industry.
The cost of working in silos
Individually, both teams excelled. The product strategy group shaped strong priorities for innovation, and the technology team delivered robust solutions. The problem emerged when initiatives required them to work together.
Without a shared vision, each team made sound choices in isolation that clashed in practice. Strategic product roadmaps ran into technological barriers, while technology investments failed to advance strategic priorities. Leadership often found itself mediating conflicts instead of driving outcomes.
Operationally, four issues compounded the problem:
Strategic alignment proved elusive as teams lack a unified strategic vision to guide long-term development and investment decisions.
Process standardization remained inconsistent. While improvement efforts existed within individual teams, there was significant room for optimization.
Role clarity and decision rights created daily confusion. Unclear accountability across functions resulted in duplicated efforts and delayed decision-making.
Success metrics were absent. The organization lacks success metrics to drive accountability and measure progress across the teams.
For a company facing shifting regulations, competitive threats, and pressure to move fast, fragmented execution carried real business risk.
Redesigning collaboration with scenario-based simulations
With silos and unclear roles slowing execution, the teams worked with Acquis to establish new ways of working and make collaboration the default. The work began with structured workshops, where participants explored coordination breakdowns, surfaced assumptions driving misalignment, identified opportunities for shared decision-making, and established regular cadences to sustain alignment. These sessions created a shared understanding of the challenges and set the stage for practical action.
With a clear picture of where friction was highest, the teams turned their attention to redesign. Acquis conducted cross-functional workshops to bring strategy and technology together to tackle the most critical pain points. The teams mapped workflows, clarified roles using RACI charts, and ensured both strategic intent and technical feasibility were embedded at every step. The revised frameworks anchored each decision in real-world priorities, so the new processes were not just documented, but actionable.
But documented frameworks don't automatically translate to changed behavior. To ensure adoption, the designs needed to be stress-tested in conditions that mirrored actual work.
Using scenario testing — simulations of real-world conditions — Acquis enabled teams to walk through realistic business cases, exercising decision-making, handoffs, and role clarity in a controlled environment. By “rehearsing” these interactions, participants pressure-tested their revised frameworks, allowing them to surface hidden ambiguities, resolve gaps before rollout, and build confidence in working together.
As a result, the teams created a comprehensive operating model with standardized processes, clearly defined roles, shared success metrics, and regular alignment cadences — all supported by a roadmap for adoption across the organization. By moving from workshops to redesign to rehearsal, the teams transformed collaboration from a concept into an embedded capability.
From parallel work to integrated execution
The redesigned processes, validated through scenario-based simulations, transformed how strategy and technology worked together. By pressure-testing processes, the teams entered live operations with shared understanding, confidence, and clarity in decision-making — turning frameworks into practiced behaviors.
Key outcomes included:
Unified vision: Both teams gained shared ownership of strategic priorities and confidence that technology investments aligned with business goals
Streamlined workflows: Standardized handoffs reduced delays, accelerating initiative execution and freeing leadership from constant firefighting
Clear roles and accountabilities: Ambiguities were resolved before live operations, eliminating duplication and ensuring decisions moved forward efficiently
Measurable collaboration: Shared success metrics allowed leadership to track not just output, but the effectiveness of cross-functional execution
What began as a series of misaligned teams evolved into an integrated, confident organization. Strategic intent, clear processes, and practiced collaboration now enable the company to move faster, make decisions with confidence, and deliver results that matter.
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