Metaphors are powerful. Which ones do you use in your teamwork. Here is one I have been using that teams relate well to called the Zipper merge.
Picture yourself driving on a busy highway where two lanes are merging into one. You see a “Merge Ahead” sign, and drivers in both lanes take turns integrating smoothly, one by one, like the teeth of a zipper coming together. This simple yet effective process—known as the zipper merge—is not just a best practice in traffic management; it’s a useful way to think about how organizations can navigate complexity and interdependence more effectively.
In Team of Teams Coaching, the zipper merge offers a way to understand how teams can move beyond isolated performance toward greater collective impact—achieving what they could never accomplish alone.
This idea is explored in depth in our upcoming book, Team of Teams Coaching, which will be published in June 2025 and is already available on Amazon for pre-order.
The Zipper Merge and the Power of Teamwork
The zipper merge works because it follows a few key principles:
✅ Use all available lanes efficiently (instead of forcing an early merge or hanging back unneccesarily, creating congestion).
✅ Take turns merging (ensuring fairness and flow).
✅ Communicate and adjust (signaling, spacing, and trusting that others will follow the system).
Zipper merging is not fully structured, as traffic light systems as, but rather requires cooperation. When applied to teams and leadership, these same principles help organizations navigate complexity, reduce bottlenecks, and enable high-performance collaboration.
When applied to teams and leadership, these same principles help organizations function with greater fluidity—avoiding unnecessary bottlenecks and enabling more effective collaboration.
From Siloed Teams to a Networked Team of Teams
Many organizations still operate in a traditional model, where teams function in relative isolation—often unintentionally creating inefficiencies. The Team of Teams approach takes a different view, recognizing that while teams must maintain their autonomy, they also need to remain deeply interconnected with the larger system.
The zipper merge offers a useful way to think about how these dynamics can play out in organizations:
1. Shared Purpose: The Greater Goal That Calls Them Forward
Just as drivers in a zipper merge share the goal of keeping traffic flowing, teams in an organization benefit from clarity on the broader purpose they serve. A Team of Teams structure isn’t just about improving coordination—it’s about creating the conditions for organizations to meet the complex challenges they face.
2. Interdependence: Merging Without Disruption
A successful zipper merge requires each driver to trust that others will take their turn. Similarly, effective teams coordinate across functions, geographies, and hierarchies—understanding that success depends on working both independently and collectively.
3. Adaptive Leadership: Guiding the Flow of Collaboration
In merging traffic, situational awareness is essential—drivers adjust in real time. Likewise, in a Team of Teams culture, leaders play a facilitative role, ensuring that collaboration is fluid while enabling teams to make the decisions they need to make. Leadership here is less about control and more about orchestrating alignment and responsiveness.
4. Distributed Decision-Making: Empowering Teams to Act
In the zipper merge, drivers don’t wait for a traffic controller to instruct them—they act based on an agreed understanding of the system. This mirrors the distributed leadership model in a Team of Teams, where decision-making is shared rather than bottlenecked at the top.
5. Organizational Efficiency: Keeping the System Moving
When everyone follows the zipper merge, traffic keeps moving and unnecessary delays are minimized. The same is true in organizations—when collaboration is well-structured, work flows more effectively, reducing redundancy and misalignment.
6. Rules of Engagement: Shared Collaboration Protocols
As with the zipper merge, where drivers follow basic expectations about how to merge, collaborating teams need clear, shared guidelines for how they will work together. Without these agreed ways of working, confusion and inefficiencies arise. Defining how teams interact, escalate issues, and coordinate decisions helps keep things moving smoothly.
7. Signal Well in Advance: Forewarning & Purpose Alignment
On a major highway, drivers receive clear notice when lanes will merge—including the reason why. Similarly, teams in organizations need advance warning when collaboration will be necessary and why it matters. When teams understand the rationale for integrating their efforts, they can prepare and align more effectively.
The Road Ahead: Strengthening How Teams Work Together
The zipper merge isn’t just about individual cars—it’s about how the system as a whole functions best. In the same way, Team of Teams collaboration isn’t just about improving individual teams—it’s about strengthening the organization’s overall capacity to adapt, learn, and respond to change.
A few questions worth considering:
🚀 Does your organization’s structure enable agility, or does it unintentionally create bottlenecks?
🚀 Are your teams well-connected to each other, or are they working in silos?
🚀 How clear is the broader purpose your teams are contributing to, and is it shaping the way they collaborate?
Much like the zipper merge, effective collaboration depends on trust, shared understanding, and thoughtful coordination. Creating the conditions for this kind of teamwork requires both structural and cultural shifts—but when done well, it enables organizations to work at their best.
Further Exploration & Contact
Pre-Order the Book: Team of Teams Coaching
Interested in developing a more effective Team of Teams in your organization? Contact Naysan Firoozmand
Want to learn more about our Team of Teams Coaching training? Contact Catherine Carr
