I don’t think most departments actually loathe each other. What people experience as friction is usually a byproduct of different incentives, language, and success metrics, not animosity.
Historically, teams like marketing, engineering, product, and comms were designed to operate in parallel. That made sense when discovery, experience, and measurement were more cleanly separated. Today, those systems overlap, so the seams between teams are suddenly visible.
Collaboration works best when it’s framed around shared outcomes, not forced alignment. If you go high enough, every team is trying to support the same thing: company success. The tension shows up when each group is measured locally, but the impact is global.
Two practical ways teams can work better together right now:
First, agree on where work overlaps before debating how to do it. For example, SEO, brand, and UX don’t own the same things, but they all influence discovery and conversion. Naming those intersections explicitly reduces friction because expectations are clear.
Second, anchor collaboration to a concrete outcome instead of a process. Pick a shared goal like “reduce drop-off on high-intent pages” or “improve how our brand shows up in AI answers” and work backward together. Outcomes create alignment faster than org charts.
At the end of the day, this isn’t about departments learning to like each other. It’s about adapting how work gets done when systems change. The teams didn’t fail. The environment evolved.
Thanks Bill! 🙏🙏 And I’d agree! Not just with your additions, but I also suspect with many more that we could all come up with. I knew when I wrote this one I would be covering every single aspect exhaustively, which kind of reinforced the point I was making. Appreciate you adding these! 🤝
What an excellent post (and Substack), thank you, Duane.
Definitely feels like the most significant shift in decades, one that will eventually change how SEOs, CROs, and all other website "Os" work. I completely agree that the core work hasn't changed much, but the rest of the puzzle has.
If you'd ever be up for it, I'd love to have you on my podcast (No Hacks) and discuss this. The podcast is about figuring out what optimization means in the agentic era, I recently had people like Jono Alderson and Jes Scholtz for some great conversations.
Thanks for the kind words, Slobodan. 🙏 I’d be happy to join you to chat more about this! It’s been a recurring topic for our industry since it started, and for good reason! Hopefully we can keep up with Jono and Jes and give your listeners more to talk about! Track me down on LinkedIn and we’ll make the plan happen.
That what makes it so exciting :)
Completely agreed! 🤝🙏
Your like the god of articulation. You lay it out so perfect.
Nah, just a guy with a LOT of PR training in his background... ;)
Hey I've been looking for these types of conversations on here for ages.
I'm sitting right on the intersection of tech and marketing and we're not in Kansas anymore.
How should departments that historically loathe each other work together?
I don’t think most departments actually loathe each other. What people experience as friction is usually a byproduct of different incentives, language, and success metrics, not animosity.
Historically, teams like marketing, engineering, product, and comms were designed to operate in parallel. That made sense when discovery, experience, and measurement were more cleanly separated. Today, those systems overlap, so the seams between teams are suddenly visible.
Collaboration works best when it’s framed around shared outcomes, not forced alignment. If you go high enough, every team is trying to support the same thing: company success. The tension shows up when each group is measured locally, but the impact is global.
Two practical ways teams can work better together right now:
First, agree on where work overlaps before debating how to do it. For example, SEO, brand, and UX don’t own the same things, but they all influence discovery and conversion. Naming those intersections explicitly reduces friction because expectations are clear.
Second, anchor collaboration to a concrete outcome instead of a process. Pick a shared goal like “reduce drop-off on high-intent pages” or “improve how our brand shows up in AI answers” and work backward together. Outcomes create alignment faster than org charts.
At the end of the day, this isn’t about departments learning to like each other. It’s about adapting how work gets done when systems change. The teams didn’t fail. The environment evolved.
Thank you.
Hey Duane,
Excellent Article. I would add to this international, and now Universal Commercial Protocol.
Thanks Bill! 🙏🙏 And I’d agree! Not just with your additions, but I also suspect with many more that we could all come up with. I knew when I wrote this one I would be covering every single aspect exhaustively, which kind of reinforced the point I was making. Appreciate you adding these! 🤝
What an excellent post (and Substack), thank you, Duane.
Definitely feels like the most significant shift in decades, one that will eventually change how SEOs, CROs, and all other website "Os" work. I completely agree that the core work hasn't changed much, but the rest of the puzzle has.
If you'd ever be up for it, I'd love to have you on my podcast (No Hacks) and discuss this. The podcast is about figuring out what optimization means in the agentic era, I recently had people like Jono Alderson and Jes Scholtz for some great conversations.
Thanks for the kind words, Slobodan. 🙏 I’d be happy to join you to chat more about this! It’s been a recurring topic for our industry since it started, and for good reason! Hopefully we can keep up with Jono and Jes and give your listeners more to talk about! Track me down on LinkedIn and we’ll make the plan happen.
Will do! Thank you :)
Haven’t we been saying that all along, esteemed colleague?
And yet, so many have not heard the message, judging by the chats and meetings I have...
I’ve been singing that song since 1995…well documented, too.