To win the season, you need to win games. To win games, you need to score goals. And no matter how intricate your game plan, you are going to be judged mostly by whether you win it, regardless of the way you play the game. So, it does not matter how you do it—what matters is getting it done first.

Highly talented teams sometimes fall into this trap and lose track of what matters to a business. Entangled within processes which are merely tools, they focus excruciatingly on the bits that only matter to their corresponding expertise. Yet, irrespective of the atomic beauty of each bit, in the eyes of users and investors, your worth is somewhat correlated with the degree of how much your solutions remedy user needs.

The problem manifests itself in two ways. Either teams inadvertently lose sight due to a lack of cohesion between functions or deliberately choose this type of estrangement as they see it as a better option for their benefit. The former seems to be a management problem. One who is steering the ship is also responsible for the morale of the crew and should keep abreast of how the team members approach the issues at hand, as a whole. Delivering great features that are not compatible with each other would be a costly endeavour when you promise a complete product. Starting from the departmental levels to the individual members of a particular team, each party’s outputs should nicely dovetail. Otherwise, even with the most stunning bits, you end up with a subpar product. The latter is also a management problem as it hints at a cultural issue. If any team member concentrates more on their craft rather than creating something as a team, it signals that there is a vision-oriented discrepancy in team composition. There could be a trust issue embedded in this type of behaviour as team members may fathom that by turning the lights on themselves and their craft they’ll be better off.

Maintaining unity in thinking and vision, as a proactive measure, and acting swiftly, as a reactive measure, could help you to steer clear of falling into this trap.

Unity is a must. How tightly knit the two farthest points of an organisation say something about getting results. Ideally, all functions must know the business inside out, what makes users happy, and what brings revenue just as a carpenter cannot build the best chair if he has not sat on one before. Or an officer does not empathise with an activist if he has not been tasered before. The most successful products I’ve seen so far come from individuals with deep domain understanding or with first-hand accounts of pain points.

Swiftness is a must. If there are individuals onboard who prioritise their gains over their teams, you need to act fast. Because harmony surrounding the production line is a fragile phenomenon, a bad actor can easily tip it over and turn things around. When left unattended, which happens more often than not, things go sour very quickly. Thus, once spotted, you need to apply quarantine rules. Isolate the sick, and quarantine those who are exposed to let everyone know this type of behaviour is not welcome. That’s the only thing you can do after you see the symptoms.

Results speak louder than process, style, or brilliance, especially in the early stages. Once you’ve proven yourself through results—through unity in thinking and swiftness in action—you earn the right to experiment with how you get there. Wins become your most convincing arguments, justifying your managerial MO. Until then, remember: winning your first few games matters more than how beautifully you trained or played.