New Column: The Myth of “One Team” — What Global Project Managers Should Let Go First

“Let’s move forward as one team.”
It is not uncommon to hear phrases like this at the kickoff of a global project.
 

This expression became widely known as the slogan of the Japan national team during the Rugby World Cup 2019. Players from diverse backgrounds came together as a unified team and challenged some of the world’s strongest opponents, inspiring many with their performance.

However, applying this success story directly to global projects can be misleading.

The Japanese rugby team was able to function as “one team” because all the necessary conditions were in place:
a shared goal, a unified chain of command, clearly defined roles, and a system where everyone was evaluated by the same outcome. In other words, their interests were fully aligned.

Now consider a global project.

Headquarters, local subsidiaries, and vendors each operate under different conditions. They report to different leadership, are evaluated against different KPIs, and prioritize different objectives. Headquarters may push for speed, local teams may emphasize operational stability, and vendors may focus on efficiency within contractual scope.

While they may appear to be on the same field, in reality, they are playing different games.

Under such circumstances, simply advocating for “one team” does not change reality.
 

Even if alignment appears to exist in meetings, actions on the ground will diverge according to each party’s evaluation criteria. Over time, these misalignments accumulate—eventually surfacing as delays or quality issues.

This is where many projects fail.

The assumption that “better relationships will solve problems” or “shared goals will naturally align behavior” may hold true in domestic contexts, but it rarely works in global environments. The issue is not people—it is structure.

So what should be done?

The first step is to accept the reality that the team is inherently fragmented. From there, projects must be designed with differing interests in mind.

A critical element is aligning evaluation criteria—what we might call incentive alignment.
 

People act according to how they are measured. If headquarters is evaluated on release timelines while local teams are measured on operational stability, no amount of shared messaging will truly align behavior. This is not a matter of mindset, but of structure.

Therefore, projects must be designed so that the “right actions” are naturally selected.

For example, teams can be evaluated on both release speed and early-stage defect rates as shared KPIs. Alternatively, trade-offs—such as accepting a certain level of risk in exchange for speed—should be made explicit. Most importantly, decision-making authority and priorities must be clearly defined.

Returning to the rugby example, the team functioned not because of spirit alone, but because of its structure.
 

All players were evaluated by the same score, enabling both forwards and backs to act beyond their individual roles for the benefit of the team. If each position had been evaluated differently, the team would not have held together.

The same applies to global projects.
What matters is not harmony, but a structure that works.

Equally important is not avoiding conflict. 

In rugby, intense physical contact is an essential part of the game. It cannot be avoided. Similarly, when organizations with differing interests work together, conflict is inevitable. Suppressing it is what creates risk. Instead, conflicts should be surfaced early and used to drive clear decision-making.

In global projects, “one team” is not an ideal—it can often be a risk.

What is required is not unity, but a functional structure.

The role of a project manager is not to unify people under a single banner. It is to design mechanisms that enable effective decision-making among organizations with differing interests.

A team does not form naturally.
It only functions when it is deliberately designed.