“That’s not my department.”
Five words that cost companies more than any bad contract.
In my work, I see it constantly:
→ Procurement buys on price. Operations pays the hidden costs.
→ Finance cuts a line. Sales loses the tool that closed deals.
→ Everyone hits their KPI. The company still bleeds money.
Each team does its job. Nobody does the job - seeing how it all connects. Silos don’t send invoices. But I find their cost everywhere: duplicated suppliers, three departments paying for the same software, decisions optimised for one desk and paid for by another. Growth doesn’t stall because people work too little. It stalls because effort is fragmented.
My question to every CEO I meet: when did you last look at your costs across departments - not within them?
