Teams are all the rage. Putting together good teams is the challenge.
Hoping to capitalize on diverse perspectives and expertise, companies are knocking down traditional silos in favour of cross-functional co-operation and collaboration.
Bringing people together from across the company means problems and challenges are explored through different lenses, and focuses success on organizational rather than individual departmental gains.
Cross-functional teams have tremendous potential, but maximizing productivity can be a challenge.
Finding the right mixture of people can be a problem and potential conflicts often arise as people bring different or even competing mandates, speak different technical languages, put their “home” priorities ahead of team commitments and commit less to their team leaders than to their “real” bosses.
Here are five tips for getting your cross-functional team off to the right start.
1. Align the work to the success of the organization
Cross-functional teams are most successful when they are working on a real project that has a direct impact on moving the organization forward, and has the clear support of strong senior leaders who are hungry for the outcomes.
There are too many examples of discouraged people who have devoted their time and energy to task forces, committees or other cross-functional teams only to have their work shelved because the deliverables ended up out of alignment with organization strategy because the project wasn’t clearly defined at the outset.
2. Pick the right people
Cross-functional teams need people with the time, expertise and commitment to focus on project demands. The right person doesn’t necessarily have to be the most senior person capable of the task. In fact, cross-functional project teams can considerably expand a junior employee’s portfolio of skills and experience, and allow her to build important networks that are key to more senior-level success.
While the right number of people will obviously depend on the specific project, the team should be small enough (usually six to 10 people) to ensure members maintain a high level of connectivity and interdependence. While organizations may want to involve more people because they need the functional expertise, distinctions can be made between advisors and core team members.
Jamie Erickson, vice-president of human resources and organization development at Lavalife (formerly Interactive Media Group) with 450 employees, says “cross-functional teams are an art” in his organization. This innovative organization, that develops and uses powerful technology to link singles across North America, regularly uses cross-functional teams on complex organization priorities, such as the consolidation of its call centres in North America, which involved employees from marketing, IT, legal, finance and HR.
At Lavalife, they involve “SMEs” (subject matter experts) to act as liaisons to get information from the various functional groups that are needed for effective decision-making.
3. Define team member roles
The roles of team members should be clearly defined based on a detailed project plan that lists deliverables, responsibilities, milestones and timelines.
It is important for every team member to understand their specific contributions to the project, as well as the specific roles and responsibilities of the other members. It is helpful to have a meeting specifically to introduce team members to each other, and allow members to give a brief presentation of their backgrounds and expertise.
Cross-functional teams are comprised of new people and they need time to understand what their team members bring to the project and how they can help others.
The specific roles of team members should also be communicated to the rest of the organization so that people know who to go to for answers. At Lavalife, they designate only one person for overall accountability for a project and this person acts as a liaison with others in the organization, thereby ensuring communication is streamlined and consistent and that there are no excuses for activities falling through the cracks.
4. Hold people accountable to the project plan
Members of cross-functional teams frequently perceive their work on the team to be secondary to their “normal” jobs.
According to Erickson, “if the project doesn’t have alignment with organization goals, then functional silos do become a challenge.” Due to strong alignment between the work of cross-functional teams and organization strategy, competition between functional and organizational interest is rare at Lavalife.
Regular status update meetings are important to keep projects on track.
These regular conversations with all group members should identify any potential barriers to meeting targets and identify information or resources needed to support timely deliverables.
Group members have a responsibility to inform others in advance of the meeting if they are not able to meet their individual commitments, so that no one is blindsided by work not being delivered as expected. Holding more frequent meetings at the outset of a project can help to ensure that people have a shared understanding of commitments and the formal and unwritten rules that will guide their work as a team.
At Lavalife, they have found that “if they meet regularly as a collective, conversations start to happen outside the meeting rooms.”
While geography can pose a challenge if team members are in different locations, technology is making it easier to maintain strong connections through videoconferencing, Web-based group communication and improved project management software.
5. Build a community of shared understanding
An exciting part of being on a cross-functional team is the opportunity to gain insights about the work of other functional areas, and their approaches to solving problems. But it can also cause stress to team members who may feel intimidated by their lack of knowledge of other functions and confused by the different technical language.
Humour can help to break down barriers. For example, Erickson says that his HR team is comfortable saying, “Excuse me but for the non-IT speaking population, could you put that in terms that I can understand?” And his own group responds positively to requests of, “Please don’t speak in OD language, speak in real people speak.”
A culture that encourages people to ask questions without fear of reprisal allows everyone to move forward as a team and have more fun in the process.
Choosing the right team for a job and getting it off to the right start can be a time consuming and complex exercise. It won’t always be easy, and countless hidden hurdles will challenge all teams, but by bearing these few tips in mind when putting together a team, organizations may find the team members jump out of the blocks with a strong start, and then happy endings are easier to realize.
Sue Nador is a partner with NVision Consulting Ltd. She can be reached at [email protected] or (416) 466-3010.
