When rapid growth breaks collaboration, and how to fix it

We all want growth; it’s what we chase every quarter. But here’s the reality: growth breaks things.

When you were smaller, collaboration was easy. If you had a question for Engineering or needed a favor from Sales, you didn’t need a process. You just leaned over the aisle or walked down the hall. You knew their names and  exactly what they were working on because you were probably working on it with them.

But then you succeeded. You grew.

Suddenly, those easy conversations turned into formal requests. "Leaning over the aisle" became scheduling a meeting three weeks out. And those people you used to know? Now they’re just "The Sales Team" or "Product."

As you added layers of management to handle the scale, you inadvertently built walls. You didn’t mean to. But now, instead of alignment, you have friction. Instead of speed, you have bureaucracy.

This is exactly where WP Engine found itself. In just four years, they rocketed from 50 employees to nearly 500. And as they scaled, they felt the drift. The human connections that fueled their early speed were snapping under the weight of new processes and headcount.

So, how do you fix it? Most leaders try to solve this with more meetings, clearer org charts, or "forced fun" team building.

But WP Engine did something different. They realized they didn't have a process problem. They had a mindset problem.

Why Growth Creates Silos 

When we don't know the people in other departments—when we don't see their faces or hear their challenges daily—it becomes incredibly easy to turn inward.

We stop seeing them as people with their own objectives and pressures. We start seeing them as obstacles.

• "Why is Product so slow?"

• "Why can't Sales sell what we actually built?"

• "Why is Finance killing this deal?"

This isn't because your people are bad. It's because they are separated. And when we are separated, we make up stories to justify our frustration. That is the self-deception of the inward mindset at scale.

WP Engine knew they couldn't just "tell" people to collaborate better. They needed a mechanism to help teams see each other again.

The "Ambassadors Program": A Structural Solution for Mindset

To bridge the gap, WP Engine’s leaders worked with their internal Arbinger facilitator to design a path back to alignment. They started with a tool we call "Meet-to-Learn."

It started simply. Teams sat down, not to debate priorities or negotiate resources, but just to learn. They asked questions like:

• "What are your biggest challenges or objectives right now?"

• "How are we making your job harder?"

• "What metrics are you being driven by?"

It was eye-opening. But they knew a one-time meeting wouldn't sustain the culture they wanted. They needed to bake this curiosity into their daily operations.

So, they launched the Ambassadors Program.

Get your Meet to Learn Tool

Why It Worked: Listening, Not "Representing"

Here is how it works: One person from a team (the Ambassador) attends another team’s weekly meeting for a month.

Now, pay attention, because this is the critical part. The Ambassador’s job is not to represent their own team. They aren't there to defend their department, or push an agenda.

Their only job is to listen.

They sit in to understand the other team’s reality—their pressure points, their wins, their constraints. Then, they bring that perspective back home.

When a problem arises—say, a delay in a project—the Ambassador doesn't jump to blame. Because they’ve been in the room, they can say, "Wait a minute. I know why they missed that deadline. They spent the last three days putting out a fire for a huge enterprise client. They aren't ignoring us; they're swamped."

What Success Looks Like at Scale

This simple structural change did more than just make people "nicer." It drove business results.

• Friction Disappeared: Ambassadors could explain the intent behind actions that used to look like incompetence or malice.

• Duplication Vanished: Because they were in the room, Ambassadors spotted opportunities where both teams were trying to solve the same problem and connected the dots immediately.

• Alignment Deepened: As one employee put it, "I saw that despite our differences, my coworkers were very much in alignment with our goal of having the customer's best interest at heart."

WP Engine maintained a world-class Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 72 even while scaling rapidly, proving that you don't have to trade your culture for growth.

Ready to Break Down the Walls?

If your organization is feeling the strain of growth, if silos are slowing you down and "us vs. them" language is creeping into your meetings—it’s time to address the mindset driving it.

You don't have to let growth kill your culture. You just have to help your people see each other again.

Request a strategy session with an Arbinger expert here.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Does the "Ambassador" role take too much time away from actual work?

A: Think about the time your teams currently spend fighting fires, sitting in unproductive meetings, or re-doing work caused by miscommunication. The Ambassadors Program requires a few hours a week for one person, but it often saves dozens of hours of organizational waste and friction. It’s an investment in speed.

Q: Isn't this just spying on other departments?

A: It can feel that way if the mindset is inward. That is why the ground rules matter. If an Ambassador goes in to "gather intel" to use against the other team, it will fail. If they go in with the explicit mandate to learn how to help the other team, it builds trust. The mindset determines the outcome.

Q: Can we do this without an external facilitator?

A: You can certainly try the mechanics of it. However, teams often struggle to ask the right questions or truly listen without defensiveness at first. Arbinger equips your leaders with the frameworks to ensure these interactions build bridges rather than reinforce silos.

Q: Does this work for remote or distributed teams?

A: Absolutely. In fact, it’s even more critical for distributed organizations where you can’t rely on hallway collisions to build context. Joining a Zoom stand-up or a Slack channel as a designated "learner" creates visibility that remote teams desperately need.