Misaligned, Not Opposed
Most of the hardest problems I’ve worked weren’t technical. They were standoffs between people who all wanted something reasonable and couldn’t get out of each other’s way. A corporate standard lands in a business unit. The business unit pushes back. Corporate digs in. From the outside it looks like a fight. It almost never is. The parties in that standoff are not opposed. Their interests are misaligned — which is a different thing, and a far more workable one.