A simple framework that aligned teams at Target, Google, and LEGO

Marketing drives acquisition, product builds functionality, design crafts interactions, and AI increasingly shapes personalization – but who orchestrates the whole experience? The answer isn't in your org chart. It’s in your customers.

Here's the problem: while departments fight over ownership, customers experience your brand as one thing. They don't care that your email comes from marketing, your app from product, and your support from operations. When these pieces don't connect, customers notice immediately – and they leave.

Why Most Teams Get This Wrong

Think of Google Glass: brilliant technology that solved real problems, but failed because Google optimized for the product, not the ecosystem. Privacy concerns, social awkwardness, and cultural resistance killed adoption. Now Meta is trying again because the ecosystem factors – remote work, AR acceptance, better technology – have finally shifted in their favor.

The lesson? You can't just design products or services – you have to design within their context too. But most organizations approach this backwards, asking "How do we coordinate our departments?" instead of "How do customers actually experience us?"

The Real Solution: Start Where Customers Start

A commandment I live by is to “never let your org chart show,” – meaning design how you’re organized with your customer in mind. Moving from newsrooms to boardrooms taught me that great stories and great strategies both start the same way: with better questions. As a recovering journalist working with teams at places like Target, Google, and LEGO, I've learned that the art of asking questions – and listening – separates reactive coordination from proactive orchestration.

Here's the framework that's helped me guide teams through complex experience challenges – not by reorganizing departments, but by reorganizing how they think about their customer:

Layer 1: People (Start Here – This Solves 80% of Turf Wars)

Most organizational conflicts happen because teams have different assumptions about who they're serving. Marketing targets "busy professionals," product builds for "power users," and support handles "frustrated customers" – but they're often the same person in different moments.

The question that changes everything: Who are our users when they're not using our product?

When I helped Target understand loyalty program behavior, we discovered members weren't just "shoppers" – they were family coordinators managing complex household needs. This insight aligned teams around designing for coordination, not just transactions, which drove the program from beta to 100+ million members.

Layer 2: Product/Service/Brand (Where Promise Meets Reality)

Your brand makes promises. Your product delivers experiences. When these don't match, customers feel betrayed – and departments blame each other.

Key insight: Focus on jobs, not features. What job is your customer hiring you to do that they can't easily do elsewhere?

Example: When Fortune wanted to transform their rankings into an insights platform, we discovered readers weren't just consuming information – they were using Fortune's credibility to make internal arguments. The new platform succeeded because it enhanced the ease which people could use Fortune’s data how they wanted.

Layer 3: Tasks (What Customers Actually Do vs. What You Think They Do)

This is where most assumptions break down. Watch customers complete real tasks and you'll see how your carefully designed experience actually works in practice.

The surprise: People combine your tools in ways you never intended. Understanding these unexpected workflows often reveals your biggest opportunities.

Layer 4: Environment (Context Changes Everything)

Your solution works differently across contexts. What works perfectly at a desk might fail completely on mobile. What feels professional in the office might seem cold at home.

The reframe: Instead of building one solution for all contexts, design for context-switching. How can your experience adapt as customer needs change?

Layer 5: Culture + Brand (The Invisible Force That Kills Good Ideas)

Brand and culture often live outside of our control – we influence these symbolic factors, but do not control them outright. Cultural momentum can make or break any experience. Privacy concerns, AI anxiety, sustainability expectations – these forces reshape entire categories overnight.

The advantage: Teams that anticipate cultural shifts instead of reacting to them win bigger and waste less effort fighting headwinds.

Why This Framework Ends Turf Wars

Here's what makes this different from other "holistic" approaches: it starts with customer truth, not organizational comfort. When teams can see how their work connects to the same customer reality, they stop optimizing for their department and start optimizing for the outcome.

I love this framework because it gives feuding teams a common language. Instead of arguing about whose job it is to own retention, they start asking "What would make our customers hire us for this job again?"

Try This Tomorrow

Pick your biggest cross-team tension right now. Instead of debating who should own what, spend one hour answering this: How do our customers experience this tension, and what job are they really trying to get done?

Interview three customers about that job. Don't ask about your product – ask about their life. You'll find that most organizational conflicts disappear when everyone's optimizing for the same customer reality.

The question isn't who owns customer experience. The question is: are we actually listening to understand our customer’s language?