Awkward Is a Signal, Not a Flaw

We’ve all experienced them:

• The awkward handoff where nobody’s quite sure who owns what.
• The stand-up that becomes a status meeting for five different priorities.
• The clunky collaboration that drains energy instead of unlocking progress.

It’s tempting to dismiss these moments as challenges we just have to live with, symptoms of working in a complex organization. But what if we treated awkwardness as a signal? A sign that the current team structures, relationships, or responsibilities are no longer supporting the way work actually flows.

What Are “Awkward Interactions”?

In Team Topologies, Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais use this phrase to describe communication between teams that feels forced, friction-filled, or unclear. You might recognize some of these:

• Handoffs that require meetings, rework, or negotiation
• Collaboration that slows to a halt due to unclear roles or conflicting priorities
• Multiple teams coordinating just to make a simple change
• Dependencies that feel more like obstacles than support

These aren’t one-off issues. They’re symptoms of structural misalignment, and they tend to show up exactly where flow breaks down.

From Friction to Insight

Rather than trying to smooth over the awkwardness or working around it by managing dependencies, we can treat it as valuable information to inform our decisions.

Awkward interactions tell us:

• Where teams are overly dependent on each other
• Where responsibilities or boundaries are unclear
• Where coordination is eating into flow
• Where ways of working haven’t adapted to new priorities

They reveal opportunities to change, not just how people work, but how teams relate - in Team Topologies terms, this is part of "Organizational Sensing".

Don’t Just Collaborate Better. Ask Why It’s Awkward.

When awkwardness surfaces, we often jump to collaboration tools or process fixes:

“Let’s have better handoff meetings.”

“Let’s define clearer SLAs.”

“Let’s be more responsive in Slack.”

But these are surface solutions. Instead, we should seek to ask:

“Why is this collaboration awkward in the first place?”

“What structural assumption is this awkwardness exposing?”

When you shift from managing awkwardness to learning from it, you open up the possibility for real change.

What This Series Covers

This article is the first in a 5-part series about how to use awkward interactions as a starting point for structural evolution. I'll explore:

1. How to recognize different types of awkward interactions

2. What they might be telling you about your current setup

3. How to decide which issues are worth acting on

4. Practical interventions you can try

5. How to turn awkwardness into a source of ongoing learning

Because awkwardness isn’t just something to fix. It’s a signal worth paying attention to.

Next up: What Awkward Interactions Are Telling You

I’ll explore how to identify patterns in friction and what different types of awkwardness reveal about how your teams and structures are working (or not).

If you would like help spotting the friction and awkward interactions in your organization, feel free to connect and DM me.