Surface Conflict Fast
The agencies that coordinate best aren’t the ones that agree most. They’re the ones that surface conflict fastest.
Agreement is easy to fake. Someone asks if everyone’s aligned, heads nod, meeting ends. But agreement doesn’t mean people are actually working toward the same thing. It just means no one wanted to be the person who raised the complication.
Conflict is information. When someone says “that won’t work for us,” they’re not being difficult. They’re telling you something about their constraints, their priorities, or their understanding of the problem that you didn’t account for.
Most leaders hear conflict and think coordination is breaking down. The opposite is true. Coordination breaks down when conflict stays hidden until it’s too late to address.
The pattern in successful multi-agency work isn’t fewer disagreements. It’s faster exposure of disagreements. Get them on the table early when they’re still manageable. When someone can still adjust course without abandoning months of work.
Surface-level alignment feels comfortable but doesn’t survive contact with reality. Real alignment gets tested and refined through the friction of honest disagreement.
If everyone always agrees with you in coordination meetings, you either have extraordinary alignment or no one trusts you enough to tell you the truth. One of those is much more common than the other.