Most companies’ individual teams or departments operate as synchronized units. Their members may have different roles but know how to work together to reach shared goals. They usually develop a camaraderie that helps them understand their coworkers better, allowing them to interact more effectively. Small businesses often operate as one unified team.
However, many companies are comprised of multiple teams and departments with specialized functions that help achieve organizational goals. Their members often know little about or seldom need to interact with other sections of the staff. As a result, groups that perform their internal work well often hit a logjam when projects or initiatives require cross-functional collaboration.
According to BigCommerce, the definition of cross-functional collaboration is:
“The process where individuals from different departments in an organization with different areas of expertise come together to achieve a common goal.”
This resource notes that these types of collaboration can happen in two ways. These efforts can be organic, such as when a sales manager consults the marketing manager about expected future buying trends so they can plan strategically. They can also be project-based, such as when leadership plans a new product line that requires tandem efforts between departments with different expertise.
Regardless of how these joint efforts arise, tensions and dysfunction frequently ensue. IT engineer specialist writes about specific challenges in a LinkedIn blog post, including:
Cross-functional collaboration can also be challenging because it is a multi-faceted process. A team of Gartner research executives explained the primary challenge in a Harvard Business Review article.
“A recent Gartner survey of more than 400 business leaders found that most companies are running as many as five types of complex initiatives at once. For example, an organization might be designing cross-channel customer experiences, while also combining its sales and marketing functions, and crafting new digital growth strategies.
The sheer breadth of resource commitments across such a range of initiatives creates a basic, pervasive background complexity.”
As a result, the article’s authors cite research that shows that 78 percent of companies report experiencing “collaboration drag.” They attribute this dysfunction to poor planning, organization, alignment, and time use. When this problem is significant, businesses are 37 percent less likely to hit their revenue and profit targets. They note:
“For most organizations, collaboration drag has reached epidemic levels.”
In another Harvard Business Review article, Behnam Tabrizi detailed the breadth of the problem. The organizational leadership expert and professor at Stanford’s Department of Management Science and Engineering writes:
“In a detailed study of 95 teams in 25 leading corporations, chosen by an independent panel of academics and experts, I found that nearly 75 percent of cross-functional teams are dysfunctional.”
His research showed that these combined groups fail on at least three of five criteria:
Tabrizi summarizes:
“Cross-functional teams have become ubiquitous because companies need to speed innovations to market. The teams are like arteries, connecting parts of the body, enabling the whole organism to renew itself.
That’s why it’s so important for leaders to pay attention to the way cross-functional teams are set up and how well they work: when they don’t function, the organization’s arteries harden. When they do, goals are met, and the organization is ultimately more successful.”
For cross-functional collaboration to have intended outcomes, leaders must take steps to bring order to the chaos. They can improve and facilitate how various groups work together by creating and coaching the behaviors that form a collaborative work culture.
Leaders must first set an example and demonstrate alignment at the executive team level if they expect their employees to follow suit. However, they need to do more than be good role models. They must also create an ecosystem with structure, methods, and tools that enable effective collaboration. These include:
Shared Sense of Ownership
Fostering a shared sense of ownership of organizational objectives is an important step. Regardless of the number of departments or teams, leaders should ensure that every employee feels vested in the company’s mission.
They can accomplish this through consistent, inclusive messaging and coaching. Explaining how an employee’s role helps drive organizational success should begin with onboarding and continue through regular meetings with supervisors. Developing a sense of ownership builds trust, belonging, and company pride and motivates employees to work toward common goals.
Setting and Understanding Goals
Managers communicate their teams’ goal when involved in a cross-functional project, but often don’t fully explain its overall objective. They also may not be explicit enough about how their team’s performance impacts that of other departments or the expectations they may have.
So, another vital aspect of generating successful cross-functional collaboration is developing each team member’s knowledge about the entire project, not just their area. Understanding all the moving parts helps people realize how their participation impacts everyone else. It also cultivates buy-in for taking part in the project’s universal success.
Leadership should also clarify expectations of how departments should interact on a joint task. Departments operating with the best intentions may miss the mark because they are unaware of what other groups expect from them. Effective collaboration includes clarifying individual and departmental roles and responsibilities.
Effective Communication
Effective communication can be difficult among a few individuals. Getting several departments on the same wavelength is even more challenging. Leaders can improve communication throughout their organization by establishing clear protocols and coaching specific behaviors, including:
Leaders can go further by helping employees develop strategic and interpersonal skills to help teams decipher and manage group dynamics. In their HBR article, the Gartner experts note:
“It’s not enough to offer the on-demand virtual courses that are typical at most companies. Making new skills stick requires guided practice, mentorship, and a team culture that treats learning as a must-do — a level of functional priority that many organizations don’t reach.”
Cross-functional collaboration is challenging, but leaders set their organizations up for success when they develop a collaborative culture. In addition, members of different departments that join forces to achieve goals get to know and appreciate other employees. When done well, the process can increase employees’ sense of belonging and deepen their engagement with the organization.