Siloes and specialized functions have their place, but to thrive in the current economic climate, firms need to invest more in building cross-functional teams. -By Donna Chan
One overlooked path to a sustainable competitive advantage is building effective cross-functional teams. While pursuing a Centers of Excellence (CoE) model can boost organizational efficiency, there are unavoidable consequences of making that choice. As many Canadian firms have discovered, it can lead to workplaces that do certain tasks with extreme efficiency but which are so specialized and siloed that opportunities for growth, connection, and profitable innovation are lost.
This is especially true in the present moment, where the lingering workplace impacts of the pandemic years are revealing teams that have become fractured and isolated. Remote work played a part, as did an understandable desire to hunker down in “safe” roles vs. seeking out cross-functional opportunities. Now, to restart internal innovation and collaboration engines and unlock the real power of cross-functional work groups, companies need to do more to develop cross-functional teams.
The first step in bolstering cross-functional capabilities is boosting cross-team connections. In a nutshell, strangers don’t instinctively collaborate with each other. It takes a certain level of familiarity to share information, to nurture ideas, and to be willing to do meaningful work with a colleague from another group or division.
So, firms need to help employees befriend each other, which can be challenging given the present day prevalence of hybrid work models and remote-first teams. However, starting with small “social hours” and guided interactive activities can make a difference. The key words there are small and interactive, because no one should believe a large all-hands meeting with one presenter is going to achieve any company bonding.
For example, to get two work groups to connect, consider a sponsored virtual lunch-and-learn session hosted by the group managers. Aim for no more than 20 participants, which may necessitate breaking the sessions into multiple days. Sponsor the lunch by sending participants gift cards for local food delivery services, which motivates showing up (and studies show employees remember gift card gifts more than they remember equivalent cash gifts). This approach allowed AWAI, Inc, with team members scattered across North America, Brazil, and South Africa, to foster a strong sense of organizational cohesion and boost collaboration even as the company gave up its physical footprint to go remote-first.
Create opportunities for cross-functional work
Along with boosting connections, companies that want the benefits of cross-functional teams need to create opportunities for cross-functional work. Adhering to a strict CoE workflow while saying cross-functional teams are desired simply won’t move the needle.
One project type that works particularly well for this is kaizen events. Kaizen events are essentially short work sprints focused on particular workplace challenges, like a product launch, process improvement, or system update. Plus, since they are improvement-seeking, multiple teams can tackle the same challenge to provide a broader variety of options for the organization at the end of the challenge period.
With a defined goal, set beginning, and set end, Kaizen events allow organizations to assemble teams knowing that the project isn’t going to become some lengthy add-on to the daily workload. The shorter-term commitment offers workers rotational development opportunities without requiring them to redeploy fully to another workgroup. At the end, teams also have the chance to present their results or recommendations and see a meaningful improvement roll out across their organization, further boosting the career and culture benefits of the project.
Iterate, improve, and innovate
Kaizen type project and other short, impactful assignments for teams also open up the next stage in the process. To grow the value of a cross-functional team takes more than one project together. Groups need to iterate their arrangements and improve their workflows together so that they can create the space necessary to innovate and implement solutions.
For example, Veolia, a French-language multi-national waste and resource management company operating across Canada, landed a large cleanup project with the military. The specialized nature of the chemicals and material involved meant a cross-functional team deployment made sense. However, the team didn’t immediately lock onto a best process for doing the work. Multiple approaches needed to be tested out before the process could be scaled up. This iteration and improvement process did deliver, though, ultimately allowing the team to complete the complicated cleanup in less than 24 months. Plus, now that the project team has returned to their regular functions, they can educate their specialty groups about what was learned to repeat the success of the team.
Remember the meta-assessment
As a final measure to unlock the full value of cross-functional team development, companies will want to do a meta-assessment on the experience. This assessment should consider the work project from the employee side and the organizational perspective, so that a true representation of the value of the experience can be captured.
For example, say a team was assembled from multiple departments to streamline a billing process. The project was completed and the full suite of recommendations is implemented. The total time from start to finish was six months, with a 12-member team bringing forward their solution at the end of the period.
From the employees’ perspective, the job was a break from their daily work. They made new connections and generally enjoyed themselves as they tested different systems and talked to subject matter experts.
Given the chance, these workers would happily work with each other again, and some have already changed processes within their “home” teams as a result, making the home teams more efficient as well.
From the company’s perspective, the project trimmed 18 months off the billing system overhaul. While expensive from a staffing perspective, it led to a faster decision. So, moving forward, the firm will want to capture the time savings but perhaps experiment with a more nimble team or with using different worker mixes to sustain the speed gains while lowering costs.
Only through a dual-sided assessment like this can such perspectives be discovered. Plus, by doing the analysis, the company can build on the successful aspects while eliminating friction or drawbacks. In this way, even in remote, distributed workplaces, firms can build up cross-functional teams, unlock their potential to drive change, and create a strong competitive advantage.