Building a Team of Teams: Five Years of Culture Transformation at OATi
The Client
OATi is a high-growth precision technology company specializing in advanced metrology and optical alignment systems. As the company expanded, leadership recognized that sustainable growth would require more than better products—it would require stronger leadership, healthier culture, and systems capable of supporting a much larger organization.
Beginning five years ago, I partnered with OATi to help build those capabilities from the inside out.
The Challenge
Like many growing organizations, OATi wasn't struggling because of a lack of talented people.
The challenges were those that naturally emerge during rapid growth:
Communication across departments
Increasing organizational complexity
Bottlenecks around key people
Knowledge trapped in individuals
Undefined ownership
Growing pains between innovation and execution
Maintaining a close-knit culture while scaling
The question became:
How do you grow from a small, highly collaborative company into a $20M+ organization without losing what made you successful in the first place?
Our Five-Year Journey
Rather than treating culture as a one-time initiative, we approached it as an ongoing operating system.
Each year built upon the previous one.
Year 1
Building Trust
We focused on psychological safety, vulnerability, honest dialogue, and creating a common language for leadership.
Tools included:
Johari Window
Leadership vulnerability
Blind-spot feedback
Team trust exercises
Year 2
Clarifying Direction
Once trust increased, we turned our attention toward organizational alignment.
Together we clarified:
Purpose
Core Values
Strategic Anchors
Organizational priorities
Leadership expectations
The leadership team stopped functioning as individual department heads and began operating as a collective leadership team.
Year 3
Expanding Ownership
Culture expanded beyond leadership.
Managers and employees began participating in identifying:
Friction points
Process improvements
Communication gaps
Customer experience improvements
Rather than leadership solving everything, employees became active contributors to improving the business.
Year 4
Strengthening Systems
As the company continued to grow, conversations shifted from personalities to systems.
We focused on:
Organizational health
Decision-making
Accountability
Leadership behaviors
Cross-functional collaboration
Continuous improvement
The culture became less reactive and more intentional.
Year 5 (2026)
Designing the Future Organization
This year's retreat represented an important shift.
Instead of asking,
"What's broken?"
we asked,
"How would owners build the next version of OATi?"
Using concepts from Team of Teams, Joy, Inc., The Culture Code, and lessons from NASA's Apollo program, employees explored how to think beyond their departments and solve problems as one interconnected system.
The Retreat
Over two days, the entire company identified what needed to be preserved as OATi grows, surfaced organizational friction, prioritized opportunities, and created ownership around five strategic initiatives.
Those priorities became:
Design Control Process
Skill Development & Cross Training
Role Clarity & Ownership
Resource Planning
Customer Documentation & Website Improvement
Rather than leaving with ideas, every employee committed to a personal 90-day action, selected an accountability partner, and helped create cross-functional service agreements between departments.
One Memorable Exercise
One evening the entire company completed an Escape Room challenge.
The activity wasn't about escaping.
It became a live simulation of organizational behavior.
Employees observed:
How information flowed
Who naturally led
Where bottlenecks emerged
How assumptions slowed progress
When collaboration accelerated solutions
During dinner, the team connected those observations directly back to daily work, reinforcing that organizational health isn't theoretical—it shows up every day in how people communicate, share information, and solve problems together.
Results
After five years, the conversations inside OATi have fundamentally changed.
The organization has evolved from discussing interpersonal issues to designing organizational systems.
Instead of asking,
"Who owns this?"
employees increasingly ask,
"How can we improve the system?"
Leadership is no longer the sole owner of culture.
Ownership has expanded across the organization.
Departments now see themselves as partners rather than silos.
Improvement efforts have become structured, measurable, and collaborative.
My Reflection
One of the greatest privileges as a coach is returning year after year and watching an organization mature.
The biggest transformation wasn't a new strategic plan.
It wasn't an org chart.
It wasn't a retreat.
It was watching people gradually shift from protecting their department to protecting the company.
That is what organizational maturity looks like.
Culture isn't built in two days.
It's built one honest conversation, one difficult decision, one better system, and one stronger relationship at a time.
About Jeff
Jeff Saari, CEO of Workplace Culture Solutions, founded his company in Keene, NH, in 2007. His enthusiastic passion and life purpose are to support leadership and cultural excellence in businesses and organizations.
He lives in Keene with his wife and daughter. He has also coached in a variety of sectors, including fitness, life, college students, and couples, and is passionate about fitness, nutrition, drumming, and spending time with his family.
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