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.

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