Unlock the Power of Cross Functional Teams

Cross functional teams bring the promise of more innovation, seamless collaboration and faster projects. They are becoming the norm in today’s more integrated businesses.

Work no longer fits neatly into our traditional vertical silos of functions and geography.

Multi-functional teams, digital transformation and complex projects cut horizontally across traditional organisational boundaries

Workflows and customers don’t care about our organisational structure, they just care about getting things done.

Some organization have Introduced a matrix organisation structure to reflect this reality, but even if you don’t have two bosses you are likely to be working in multiple teams, some of which will be cross functional, and you’ll also be working with multiple stakeholders. This is the new norm in collaboration.

Cross functional team challenges

Cross functional teams bring some additional challenges above and beyond the usual leadership and team dynamics.

• We need to navigate and balance the relationship between the vertical functions and the horizontal team. This tends to cut across the traditional power and control structures of the organisation which are often still held by the functions.
• The functional silos are still strong, with the functions usually still setting goals, deciding on key metrics, and providing capability building, reward and career development. Strong functional cultures bring diversity in points of view, but challenges in collaboration. The cross functional team usually relies on strong project management, influence without authority or, at best, sometimes dotted line reporting to try to balance this often-uneven relationship
• Decision-making can be a challenge when decisions have to be escalated up multiple functional reporting lives for approval. Escalation, empowerment and governance need to reflect a balance of power with the horizontal cross functional teams
• Cross functional success requires different collaboration and leadership skills in areas like; managing ambiguity, resolving competing, and conflicting goals and priorities, balancing divided loyalties between multiple bosses, teams and stakeholders, and overcoming challenges with accountability, escalation and control
• There is a real danger of over-collaboration with people working on multiple teams receiving large amounts of communication, meeting invitations and overall workload that isn’t well coordinated

Three priorities in unlocking the power of your cross functional team

The secret of cross functional team success lies in working through the detail of these challenges and in developing the mindset and skill set to thrive in this world of multiples.

We recommend you start by

1. Facilitating a clearer understanding of the roles and balance between the vertical functions and the horizontal teams, projects and structures – understanding who does what in leadership and control.
2. Understanding where authority should be exercised and building the skills to handle escalation, empowerment and governance in a way that is positive for all concerned
3. Building the skills to lead and operate within cross functional teams and across different functional cultures

Successful cross functional teams are a powerful asset in today’s dynamic work environment. By harnessing the diverse skills and perspectives of team members, organizations can drive innovation, improve collaboration, and achieve their goals more efficiently. Build the capability of cross functional teams and watch your workplace transform

We’ve been training cross functional teams for 30 years and have some well validated, practical facilitation and training tools to help accelerate your journey in these areas.

In future blogs we will be digging into each of these challenges in more detail, so please follow us to keep getting updates.

If you recognise these challenges and you need to improve your cross functional leadership and collaboration, let’s talk.