Coordinated Attacks on the Corporate Chessboard
Mastering Cross-Functional Collaboration
In chess, the most brilliant checkmates rarely come from a single piece acting alone. They emerge from coordinated attacks where knights, bishops, and rooks work in perfect harmony—each piece contributing its unique strengths to achieve a shared objective.
I've always been a collaborator at heart. Some of my earliest professional memories involve huddling with colleagues over shared documents—co-editing emails to senior stakeholders, wordsmithing each line until we found just the right tone, or spending hours in conference rooms facilitating cross-team workshops to untangle competing priorities and align on shared goals.
If you've ever studied classic chess matches, you'll notice something key to the game: the most elegant victories aren't displays of individual brilliance, but masterclasses in coordination. The queen may deliver the final blow, but it's the subtle positioning of knights, the diagonal pressure from bishops, and the linear support of rooks that create the conditions for checkmate. Your career operates on the same principle—success is fundamentally a collaborative endeavor, whether you're crafting a simple email or orchestrating complex organizational change.
This insight aligns with what Ronald Burt discovered in his groundbreaking research on structural holes: individuals who broker connections between disconnected internal groups gain significant advantages in information access, timing, and organizational influence. Within your own organization, understanding these internal network dynamics becomes a critical component of Organizational Quotient. As James Coleman noted in "Foundations of Social Theory," "social capital is created when the relations among persons change in ways that facilitate action"—and nowhere is this more apparent than in cross-functional collaboration within your own organization.
The Opening: Mapping Your Internal Landscape
Think of your opening moves in internal collaboration like the initial phases of a chess match: deliberate, authentic, and setting up for long-term strategic advantage. Just as a chess player seeks to control the center of the board, high-OQ professionals understand that occupying strategic positions in organizational networks creates competitive advantage within their own company.
Understanding your internal organizational landscape is fundamentally different from external networking. Here, you're not meeting strangers—you're working with people who already have perceptions of you, existing relationships with each other, and established ways of operating. Your goal is to map the informal power structures, identify key influencers across departments, and position yourself as someone who can bridge organizational silos.
Building internal alliances isn't about collecting colleagues like chess pieces in a box—it's about understanding how different cross-functional relationships create strategic value within your organization. As organizational psychologist Adam Grant notes in "Give and Take," the most successful internal collaborators approach relationships as "givers" rather than "takers," focusing on how they can create value for other departments rather than extracting it.
The Middle Game: Understanding Internal Network Architecture
Reid Hoffman, founder of LinkedIn, famously said, "No matter how brilliant your mind or strategy, if you're playing a solo game, you'll always lose out to a team." Within your organization, understanding who plays what role becomes even more critical because these relationships directly impact your day-to-day effectiveness.
Internal Mentors: Your Strategic Advisors Like experienced chess coaches who know your organization's specific playing style, internal mentors help you see patterns you might miss and anticipate moves several turns ahead within your company's unique culture. They've navigated your organization's specific politics and can share hard-won wisdom about getting things done. The key is identifying mentors across different functions, not just within your department.
Cross-Functional Sponsors: Your Power Players These are individuals with organizational influence who actively advocate for your advancement within the company. Unlike external sponsors, these people understand your organization's promotion criteria, resource allocation processes, and decision-making dynamics. They use their internal political capital to open doors for you in rooms where you don't yet have access.
Lateral Allies: Your Tactical Partners These are your peer-level collaborators across different departments—colleagues whose skills and perspectives complement yours in achieving shared organizational goals. Think of them as your knight-to-your-bishop combinations: different functional expertise, but devastating when coordinated effectively on cross-departmental initiatives.
Internal Connectors: Your Organizational Bridge-Builders These are individuals who seem to know everyone across the organization and understand how different departments interconnect. They're like the pieces that control central squares on the organizational chessboard—their position creates opportunities for cross-functional collaboration.
I hope I've served as an Internal Connector throughout my various roles, largely through what I call work "extracurriculars"—leading employee resource groups, launching new internal programs, and generally saying "yes" to initiatives that expand my understanding of how our organization really works. There's something energizing about these boundary-spanning activities that goes beyond my day job.
My genuine curiosity about people naturally extends my network beyond my immediate team. I've discovered that some of the most valuable organizational insights come from conversations with colleagues three departments over who are tackling surprisingly similar challenges from completely different angles. These connections often reveal opportunities for collaboration that would never appear on any formal org chart.
What I've learned is that being an Internal Connector isn't just about knowing lots of people—it's about understanding how different parts of the organization interconnect and being genuinely invested in helping others succeed. When you approach internal networking from a place of authentic interest rather than strategic calculation, people sense the difference, and the relationships that develop tend to be more substantial and mutually beneficial.
Strategic Execution: The Art of Internal Brokerage
Burt's research revealed something profound: managers who served as brokers between disconnected internal groups were not only better paid and evaluated more positively, but were also more likely to be promoted. Within your organization, this means identifying departments or teams that should be collaborating but aren't, then positioning yourself as the bridge.
I experienced this firsthand when facilitating a cross-functional workshop to align several disparate teams tackling the same strategic area. The challenge wasn't technical—it was organizational. Multiple departments were working on overlapping initiatives without knowing it, leading to duplicated effort and competing solutions. The key wasn't just getting the right people in the room—it was ensuring we had participants with the right collaborative mindset. If people weren't open to collaboration going into the event, the workshop wouldn't magically change them. But for those who were ready, the session identified critical gaps, challenges, and opportunities that we were able to bring to executive leaders to help move the entire initiative forward.
Reading Internal Power Dynamics High-OQ individuals understand that formal organizational charts tell only part of the story. The real power often lies in informal networks: who gets consulted before decisions, who has the ear of senior leadership, and who can actually get things done. Observe meeting dynamics, notice who speaks first and last, and pay attention to who gets cc'd on important emails.
Building Cross-Departmental Alliances Don't wait for formal collaboration requirements. If you've identified colleagues whose work intersects with yours, reach out proactively. I regularly engage with colleagues from other departments when I see opportunities for mutual benefit—sharing insights from my team's work, offering perspectives on shared challenges, or simply keeping them informed about initiatives that might impact them.
Facilitating Organizational Solutions The most powerful internal brokers don't just connect people—they facilitate solutions to organizational problems. When you see disconnected groups working on related challenges, your role becomes helping them see the bigger picture and find ways to coordinate their efforts.
Advanced Play: Mastering Organizational Social Capital
As James Coleman noted in "Foundations of Social Theory," "Like other forms of capital, social capital is productive, making possible the achievement of certain ends that would not be attainable in its absence." Within your organization, this capital becomes even more valuable because it directly impacts your ability to execute on strategic initiatives and drive meaningful change.
Internal social capital also operates differently because of shared organizational context. You're all playing by the same rules, working toward theoretically aligned goals, and operating within the same cultural framework. This creates opportunities for deeper collaboration but also requires more nuanced relationship management—you can't simply walk away if a relationship becomes strained.
Every internal interaction becomes a deposit or withdrawal from what I've written about as your "social equity bank"—the accumulated trust and goodwill you build within your organizational ecosystem. Unlike external relationships where you might interact sporadically, internal relationships compound daily through shared projects, meetings, and casual encounters. This means both positive and negative interactions have amplified effects over time.
The investments you make in internal relationships compound as people advance within the organization, but so do any relationship missteps. Smart internal collaborators understand that today's peer in another department might become tomorrow's key stakeholder when they get promoted, making every interaction an investment in long-term organizational success.
The most sophisticated internal collaborators understand that organizational relationships have unique long-term dynamics. Today's peer in another department might become tomorrow's key stakeholder when they get promoted. Today's cross-functional project partner might become tomorrow's internal sponsor. The investments you make in internal relationships compound as people advance within the organization—but so do any relationship missteps.
However, there's wisdom in understanding the limits of internal networks. Over-reliance on internal perspectives can create blind spots and limit innovation. As Brian Uzzi's research on embeddedness shows, while embedded, trust-based exchanges create faster coordination and better outcomes, over-embeddedness can insulate organizations from novel information and undermine performance. Smart internal collaborators complement their strong internal networks with external perspectives and industry insights.
The Endgame: Sustainable Internal Relationship Management
Research by Robin Dunbar suggests we can maintain approximately 150 stable relationships—your "Dunbar number." Within your organization, this constraint becomes even more important because these relationships require more frequent, higher-quality interactions than external connections.
Focus your energy on cultivating strategic internal relationships across different organizational levels and functions. This means being selective about where you invest your relationship-building energy within the company, but also being generous with genuine recognition and support when opportunities arise. The strongest internal networks are built on trust, mutual respect, and shared organizational success over time.
One of my favorite go-to moves requires minimal effort but helps keep relationships fresh: when I spot a colleague in a group meeting I haven't seen in a while, I'll send them a quick message just to say "hi, nice to see you here." The beauty of these in-the-moment interactions is that they feel natural and authentic—there's no agenda, just genuine human connection. Sometimes it builds into a longer conversation, sometimes it's just a much-needed pick-me-up for their day. Either way, these small moments of genuine connection matter more than we realize—they're the deposits that keep your social equity bank growing, one interaction at a time.
Internal collaboration also requires different relationship maintenance than external networking. You'll interact with these colleagues regularly, work on multiple projects together over time, and need to navigate the inevitable conflicts that arise when people with different departmental priorities must find common ground.
Quality consistently trumps quantity in internal professional relationships. As Coleman emphasized, social capital emerges when relationships facilitate action—when they help you and your colleagues achieve organizational goals that would be impossible working in departmental silos.
Your Next Move
Remember that in chess, even the most powerful queen needs support from other pieces to deliver checkmate. Similarly, your organizational success will ultimately depend not just on your individual skills, but on your ability to build and maintain the internal relationships that amplify your impact within your company.
Whether you're positioning for your next promotion, leading a cross-functional initiative, or simply looking to expand your influence within the organization, your internal network is your most valuable strategic asset for getting things done. Invest in it thoughtfully, nurture it consistently, and watch as coordinated internal victories become your signature move.
Your organizational chessboard is set, your internal allies are positioned. What's your next collaborative move?
