How Cohere Health Keeps Teams Aligned as It Grows
In describing how teams collaborate at Cohere Health, Himanshu Gandhi referred to a famous Sanskrit quote from the Hindu epic “Mahabharata,” which translates as: “Where there is righteousness, there is victory.”
As a site general manager at Cohere Health’s India office, he strives to foster virtuous teamwork, guided by the belief that in order to create a unified organization, everyone should work together as one team.
“This is only possible by creating and nurturing an environment where mutual respect and trust are the epicenters of the ecosystem,” Gandhi said.
While Gandhi and other leaders play a key role in shaping this environment, they’re supported by an organizational structure that promotes cohesion. In order to collaborate amidst rapid growth, Sujata Patil, director of engineering and integration for the company’s API and AI platform, said the company embraces a matrix structure built on four pillars: product, design, data and engineering. Leads from each division operate as equal partners, sharing ownership and accountability for major outcomes.
“Much like a jazz quartet, these leads operate with high levels of individual mastery while remaining in constant, fluid synchronization,” Patil said.
Cohere Health has grown significantly over the past six years, amassing a hybrid workforce of more than 850 people. Leaning on its intentional structure and thoughtful leadership, Cohere Health keeps its teams moving forward together. And with further growth on the horizon, this multifaceted approach to cross-functional collaboration will be critical to keeping its teams in sync — and supported — around the world.
About Cohere Health
Cohere Health offers intelligent prior authorization in an effort to align patients, healthcare providers and health plans on an optimal care path that drives the best possible outcomes without high costs and burdensome administrative tasks. Last year, the company acquired ZignaAI, a healthtech company based in Hyderabad, India, which develops AI-powered solutions designed to drive transparency in healthcare payment services.
How Cohere Health Builds Cross-Functional Collaboration With Pods
To lay the foundation for strong cross-functional collaboration, Cohere Health embraces a pod-based organizational structure.
According to Principal Data Scientist William Mau, each pod operates as a self-contained, cross-functional team with members from product, design, data and engineering, ensuring every division works together to achieve specific goals. This framework enables “cross-pollination” communication, with pod members attending daily standups focused on their projects and discipline-specific standups with their functional teams; for instance, data scientists meet with their pod and fellow data scientists from other pods.
“This creates seamless information-sharing across the organization and reduces siloes,” Mau said.
To drive alignment, Mau said that he uses systematic questioning to map out problem spaces for all involved teams. He establishes constraints upfront to narrow the space of possible solutions and asks probing questions to dive deeper into details and identity gaps early on.
“Knowledge is power,” Mau said. “Understanding what we need to do, the business context and acceptable tradeoffs are key to making the best decision.”
Considering different teams might use different terminology or definitions, he makes sure to understand how each team communicates.
“To mitigate the risk of misunderstanding, I regularly ask for clarification, which establishes a shared vocabulary,” Mau said.
How Cohere Health Uses Clear Roles and Multimodal Communication to Reduce Silos
Having a shared vision is critical across Cohere Health’s teams. Patil fosters cohesion by following a simple operation model with clearly defined roles and decision pathways, which reduces complexity and enables greater speed and clarity.
“Multimodal communications — spanning meetings, Slack channels, dashboards and knowledge bases — ensure information flows openly and consistently cross-functionally,” she said.
Multimodal communication also helps break self-validation loops, or closed feedback circuits that limit individual and organization growth.
“I’ve found it’s most effective to actively reflect on our many differences — expertise, educational background, lived experience, strategic lenses and even cultural nuances, especially when teams span geographies,” Patil said.
How Trust and Psychological Safety Power Collaboration at Cohere Health
At Cohere Health, collaboration is all about meeting people where they are.
“Along with co-creation, this allows us to build a work environment where people respect each other, welcome diverse perspectives, and feel safe being transparent,” Gandhi said.
Patil agrees, adding that Cohere leaders strive to be “clarity engines,” ensuring teams understand where they’re headed at all times.
“By establishing a foundation of trust first, I find that everything else — process, structure and execution — falls into place,” she said.
“By establishing a foundation of trust first, I find that everything else — process, structure and execution — falls into place.”
To build trust and foster psychological safety, Patil and other leaders use “us” language over “you” language, which moves the focus away from individual blame and toward collective problem-solving.
“Instead of, ‘Why is this task not on track?’ I ask, ‘What can we do to bring this task back on track?’” she said. “This subtle shift ensures the team is collaborative rather than defensive, focusing their energy on the issue rather than the person.”
Cohere Health’s approach to cross-functional collaboration is grounded in empathy, understanding, and meeting people at their unique experience levels and backgrounds, Mau said.
“Ultimately, if we all speak the same language, we can achieve far more together,” he said.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Cohere Health’s approach to cross-functional collaboration?
Cohere Health structures teams into self-contained pods that include members from product, design, engineering and data to ensure seamless collaboration and shared ownership of outcomes.
How does the pod model help reduce silos at Cohere Health?
Using cross-pollination communication practices, including daily standups and discipline-specific syncs, helps teams share information openly and reduce silos across the organization.
What communication practices support cohesion at Cohere Health?
Cohere Health emphasizes multimodal communication — including meetings, Slack channels, dashboards and shared knowledge bases — to keep information flowing and create clarity across functions.
How does Cohere Health build trust and psychological safety among teams?
Leaders foster trust by encouraging transparent, collaborative language, psychological safety and shared ownership, ensuring team members feel safe to speak up and solve problems together.
Why is shared language important at Cohere Health?
Because teams span disciplines and geographies, intentionally developing a shared vocabulary helps reduce misunderstandings and ensures decisions are aligned with business and product goals.
