By C200 member Lin Coughlin
When cross-functional transformations break down, it’s usually not months into execution. The first 90 days is where the trajectory is set—when teams begin moving quickly, decisions take shape, and patterns of working together start to form.
In many organizations, this period is marked by momentum. Plans are in motion, teams are engaged, and leadership sees visible progress. At the same time, critical elements of execution are being established beneath that activity: how teams interpret priorities, how decisions are made across functions, and how ownership is understood.
These choices shape how the work unfolds. When those foundations are not clearly defined, misalignment is built into the effort early and becomes increasingly difficult to correct as execution accelerates.
Research from McKinsey shows that roughly 70% of transformation efforts fail, often due to execution challenges rather than strategy. Here are five things cross-functional teams most commonly get wrong in those first 90 days, and what it costs them:
1. They Mistake Activity for Alignment
The first 30 days of a transformation initiative often look productive. Kickoff decks are built and a steady cadence of meetings creates the impression that the work is moving forward. Leaders describe the team as energized and moving quickly.
But activity can mask a more subtle problem. Each function begins interpreting the initiative’s goals through its own lens, and those interpretations are rarely compared.
Engineering hears “move fast” as “build now.”
Finance hears it as “control spending.”
Marketing hears “accelerate the launch.”
Sales hears “expand commitments to customers.”
Consider a global consumer goods company that launched a digital transformation initiative with a cross-functional team spanning IT, marketing, supply chain, and finance. For the first 60 days, the team held weekly syncs, produced detailed status updates, and reported being on track. By day 75, they realized IT had built an integration architecture that finance had already determined was too costly to implement. This was a decision made in a separate workstream that had never been connected to the broader effort.
What was missing was not effort, but shared understanding. Teams had aligned on the objective, but not on the assumptions or constraints shaping their decisions.
Collaboration across functions requires more than a kickoff conversation. It depends on ongoing alignment around how decisions are made and what success requires in practice. When that work is deferred, misalignment becomes embedded early and is far more difficult to correct later.
2. They Underinvest in Relationships
In the first 90 days, teams often prioritize the work and defer the relationships. That tradeoff creates risk.
When a cross-functional team is new, trust has not yet been established. People don’t know who can be relied on or how others will respond under pressure. In that uncertainty, concerns are held back, individuals stay within their functional boundaries, and alignment is assumed rather than tested.
A healthcare system undertaking an EHR platform transition experienced this directly. The team moved quickly into workstreams without establishing working relationships. By day 45, tension had developed between clinical operations and IT, rooted not in the platform itself, but in two leaders who had clashed on a previous project and never resolved it. That history carried into every technical discussion and slowed progress for months.
High-impact teams take a different approach. They invest in relationships as deliberately as they invest in results. Early in a transformation, this determines how quickly issues are raised and how effectively teams navigate tension. When this work is delayed, issues are identified later, when they are harder and more disruptive to resolve.
3. They Suppress Conflict Until It Becomes a Crisis
Transformational change is disruptive. It reshapes priorities, resources, and roles across functions. These shifts are not abstract. They affect the people responsible for executing the work.
Yet in the first 90 days, many teams operate under an unspoken norm: don’t challenge the direction too early. The initiative is new. Leadership is watching. Concerns are held back, and alignment appears intact.
What looks like agreement is often avoidance.
A financial services firm undertaking a business model transformation experienced this directly. The cross-functional planning team produced consensus-driven recommendations for two months. At the 90-day review, the head of compliance disclosed, for the first time, that two recommendations carried significant regulatory risk. The reset delayed the initiative by four months.
High-impact teams take a different approach. They make it safe to raise concerns early and treat conflict as part of the work. In practice, this means asking not only “Who supports this?” but also “What concerns have not been fully explored?”
When conflict is deferred, it becomes more difficult and more costly to address. In the first 90 days, the goal is not to avoid tension, but to ensure the right issues are raised before they limit progress.
4. They Build Accountability Systems After the Fact
In the first 90 days, teams often delay defining ownership and decision rights. That creates confusion early and conflict later. Decision-making frameworks, such as Bain’s work on decision rights, emphasize that clear ownership is critical to avoiding delays and confusion.
Without clear roles, people make different assumptions about who is responsible for key decisions. Informal dynamics take over. The most assertive voices gain influence, while others step back. By the time friction appears, patterns are already set and harder to change.
A retail company launching a supply chain transformation experienced this directly. By day 80, three team members each believed they were the primary decision-maker on vendor selection — each with a different rationale and a different preferred vendor. The resulting conflict delayed a critical milestone by six weeks and required executive intervention. A simple early conversation to define ownership and decision roles would have prevented it.
High-impact teams take a different approach. They define ownership early, clarify decision rights before decisions are needed, and make accountability visible through shared metrics and regular progress reviews. When accountability is established upfront, execution moves faster and fewer issues require escalation.
5. They Announce the Vision Instead of Co-Creating It
In the first 90 days, leaders often focus on communicating the vision rather than empowering teams in shaping it. That creates a gap between planning and execution.
Transformational change requires people to give up something—a process, a role, a way of working. Leaders often respond by increasing communication: more town halls, more messaging, more emphasis on why the change matters. But communication alone does not create ownership.
Without input from the people executing the work, important risks are missed.
A manufacturing company experienced this during an operational transformation. By day 60, frontline cross-functional team members—plant managers, logistics coordinators, and production leads—began raising implementation risks that had not been considered in the original plan. The risks had been visible early, but there was no clear path for those insights to influence decisions.
High-impact teams take a different approach. They create structured ways for input to shape the work from the beginning. The people closest to execution are also the most likely to identify where plans will break down.
When that input is missing, issues are identified later, when they are harder to resolve and more disruptive to progress.
The 90-Day Window Is Not a Timeline; It’s a Foundation
Cross-functional teams that get the first 90 days right do more than avoid early missteps. They establish how the organization will work together under pressure.
The disciplines that matter most: clear ownership, shared understanding, productive conflict, and strong working relationships, are not abstract leadership qualities. They are the practical conditions that allow execution to hold as complexity increases.
Most transformation efforts don’t fail because the strategy was wrong. They fail because the system responsible for executing it was never fully established.
Ninety days isn’t a long time. But it is long enough to determine whether a transformation builds momentum—or creates problems that are difficult to unwind.
Lin Coughlin has been a member of C200 since 2002. As an Executive Coach, Board Chair/Director, Speaker, Author, and Positive Disruptor, she advises leaders navigating career inflection points and works with leadership teams to reimagine their business models.
