I believe the goal isn’t better collaboration; it’s actually less collaboration. Great companies don’t say: “I need better customer support.” They say: “We should reduce the need for customers to contact customer support.” In the same way, great companies reduce the need for teams, and individuals, to collaborate by standardizing or productizing the interactions between the groups. This frees up teams to spend more time innovating, and less time in internal coordination meetings. The key is treating other parts of the company as customers rather than collaborators.

