What Is the Definition Of Cross-functional & Its Importance

What Is the Definition Of Cross-functional & Its Importance

6-7 minutes

Cross-Functional Team Meaning

A cross-functional team, in other words, a team formed by including people who have different functional experiences but work toward a common objective.

Does your organization too follow that old-school hierarchical structure – one with a top-down approach to management? If you said YES, it is high time for you to at least once try a cross-functional team structure!

Let''s dive in and explore everything about cross-functional teams and how it can benefit your organization in the long run!

Understanding Cross-Functional Teams Meaning!

Cross-functional teams, multi-disciplinary terms, or interdisciplinary teams are thus people from different departments of a company. This means the employees of the marketing team, product management department, and the sales and finance departments come together to achieve one single goal.

Most of the time, companies design cross-functional teams to complete a particular project or meet an urgent deadline. A cross-functional team holds so much importance – let''s learn the same in the next section!

Imagine a customer got in touch with one of your departments with a simple question, and the call got transferred from one department to another. The matter that could be resolved in a minute finally took almost 15-20 minutes. This generally happens with a company that follows a silo structure.

Now, guess the result. Obviously, losing the opportunity to create long-lasting relationships.

This is where cross-functional teams work!

For the uninitiated, having all the departments with diverse domains of knowledge can make the problem-solving process more robust and fast. Apart from this, cross-functional teams also give rise to wiser and more dependable decision-making.

Establishing cross-functional teams in your business will help you save a lot of capital, time, and many efforts all while improving your customer engagement and helping you achieve predetermined goals with ease.

Common Issues with Cross-Functional Teams

Team Adoption of Change

As you already know, cross-functional teams bring people from different departments together. The people may have a clear idea of the department they were in before and the duties they carried out. However, they can face some issues and miss the vision of the big picture while shifting to an entirely new team with new members possessing a different expertise.

Goals Misalignment

Now, let''s understand the point through a simple example.

We all believe the marketing team''s job is to acquire more leads. So now, when the marketing team does work with this particular metric, the sales department would complain that all the leads by marketing are junk. This surely happens because everyone is focusing on a different metric.

Bringing everyone on the same page while aligning their goals for the common good can be hard in itself.

Geographical Issues

This is always a challenge for most companies that may be based in different locations or on different floors, for instance. Here, managers cannot convey messages to all departments and then go ahead to follow up on the progress made. To mitigate this challenge, businesses have started using technologies such as HR software to help keep businesses together despite different locations.

Lack of Effective Collaboration

Before the actual cross-functional new product development team formation takes place, you will have to pick out a good and smooth channel of communication. In this process, you also might be entrapped in this challenge since if you do not set the agenda of the meeting and inform everyone about it.

Tracking of Progress

When you create a cross-functional team, you will notice that some of the people assigned to fulfil some of the responsibilities will be struggling to do so. Some of them will not be willing to support others when they themselves are paying attention to their own metrics. Everyone would be using different sheets or different spreadsheets to record the goals they are tracking towards. So, you will have a problem tracking the progress as a whole.

How to Build an Effective Cross-Functional Team

Ensure Diversity

Diversity is a must in cross-functional teams. Diversity in this context refers to the point-of-view of the team, gender, age, and much more. A team with a diversity of people helps you to more effectively meet the goals set by the organization.

The team should also have some strong-minded and top-performing employees. These people will act like pillars of the team who will influence and guide others in the right direction.

Set Clear Goals

We already discussed this before. You should always set the goal with a particular deadline beforehand and discuss the same with the team members. This will help your team to perform well along the way.

Reinforce Authority

Only creating a team is not going to be enough. When you want them to bring out their best selves, you will have to give them the element of feeling considered and respected. You can make them the authority on a certain project. There shall be an increase in transparency, and you can keep a check on the engagement and the level of productivity linked with it.

Facilitate Conflict Resolution

Most of the basis for conflicts is that when people are from different walks of life and different opinions, it is eminent. To eliminate that conflict, all you need to do is impart conflict resolution training and give a few opportunities to work collaboratively on a personal level.

There you go!

Now that you are armed with knowledge all about cross-functional teams and their various advantages, get one step closer and welcome this structure into your organization.

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