You’ve probably heard of the term “cross-functional team” before or maybe even have been a part of one. But what does it mean?
Cross-functional teams are groups of individuals from different departments who work together to accomplish a common goal. They’re designed to push past the traditional silos that exist within organizations and encourage collaboration and communication between departments.
While cross-functional teams can benefit companies, there are some important things to remember when starting one up. Here are a few tips for developing cross-functional teams at your business.
Top 4 cross functional teams practices
1. Define Clear Roles for Each Member
When you’re creating cross-functional teams, it’s important to make sure that everyone knows their role. If you don’t define clear roles for each member, you’ll end up with a team with many different functions but no one who is skilled in all of them.
To ensure that everyone is contributing their best work and not duplicating efforts, you should create clear roles for each member, so they know what’s expected from them. Here are some steps to set up roles for your employees:
- Create a job description for each position in your company. This should include responsibilities, duties, and qualifications for the position. It’s also helpful to include any available training programs or certifications that’ll help the employee succeed in their role;
- Create an organizational chart showing which positions report directly to you and which report directly to those positions. You may need multiple hierarchy levels depending on how many employees you have hired or promoted over time;
- Assign each team member a specific role within their department or division so they know exactly what kind of work is expected from them on a regular basis. It’s also helpful if you give employees additional titles (such as assistant manager or assistant director) so they can better understand other departments’ tasks.
Once you know what each member should be doing, it’s time to figure out how much time they’ll spend on each task. This will vary depending on how many tasks each person has been assigned and how much work those tasks require.
Finally, everyone must understand their role within the company and their responsibilities within their cross-functional teams. This can help prevent miscommunication between departments and ensure everyone knows exactly what they need to do to achieve success.
2. Put the Right People on the Right Teams
When trying to develop cross-functional teams at your business, it’s tempting to put people who are already working together. You might think it’s easier to keep things running smoothly if everyone stays in their current roles, but that’s not always true.
The right people on the right teams are essential to any business, and here are some tips for you on how to do it:
- Don’t put people on a team if they don’t want to be there. If someone doesn’t have a passion for what the team is doing, they’re not going to do their best work. And if they don’t care about the outcome of their work, it’s unlikely that anyone else will either.
- Make sure everyone has something in common, even if it’s just a shared interest in sports or music or something else that isn’t related to your business. Having one thing in common helps people bond and feel comfortable around each other so they can begin working together as a team from day one.
- Don’t put people together who don’t get along or who have had problems working together in the past. You want people who like each other and respect each other’s strengths and weaknesses, no matter how different they may seem on the surface. This will make them work better together than they would otherwise be able to do on their own.
3. Mind the Culture Gap
Every company has a unique culture. It’s what makes it special, and it’s what gives employees a sense of pride.
When you’re up against the competition, your culture can be one of your strongest assets. It can help you attract top talent, promote team member engagement and retention, and drive innovation in your business.
If you’re not careful, your company culture can also create barriers that prevent you from achieving your goals.
The most common problem is when teams within an organization don’t work well because they don’t share the same values or beliefs about how things should be done. This is often referred to as the “Culture Gap.”
The ability to develop cross-functional teams is critical to a business’s success, but it can be challenging. Having team members from different departments who don’t know each other can lead to communication breakdowns and negative perceptions.
Here are some tips for overcoming the “culture gap” and building effective cross-functional teams:
- Determine what the team’s purpose is;
- Make sure the team has a clear direction from the top of the organization;
- Set goals that are measurable and specific so that everyone knows how they are doing at any given point in time;
- Create an environment where people feel comfortable sharing their ideas and contributing to the discussions without fear of being judged or criticized for doing so.
4. Choose A Strong Leader Or Two
When developing cross-functional teams at your business, choosing the right leader can be tricky. You want someone who is a good communicator, someone who has the ability to motivate, and someone who can foster an environment that encourages collaboration.
Here are some tips for choosing strong leaders for your cross-functional teams:
- Look for leaders with experience in other areas of your business. This will help them understand how their team fits your organization’s bigger picture;
- Look for people who have demonstrated strong communication skills. They need to be able to communicate clearly with all team members, regardless of where they are located or what department they belong to;
- Choose people who have demonstrated strong organizational skills while working on other projects within your organization. They need to know how to manage multiple tasks and deadlines simultaneously so that they don’t fall behind on any one aspect of the project at hand;
- Choose people who are willing to learn new things and take on new responsibilities, especially if they’ve been with the company for a while without receiving any promotions or raises! These people may not be able to do everything perfectly from day one, but they’re willing to learn by doing it themselves or with help from others.
Other cross functional team practices that may be useful
Set Quantifiable Goals that Align with Your Business Objectives
Set quantifiable goals that align with your business objectives and then break down those objectives into smaller tasks. This will help you create actionable steps and metrics that can be shared across departments.
Many businesses struggle with creating cross-functional teams because they don’t know what their employees are doing or how they’re doing it. With clear, quantifiable goals, however, your entire team will have a better understanding of what’s expected of them and how they can contribute to your company’s success.
It’s important to set quantifiable goals that align with your business objectives. This helps you develop cross-functional teams at your business. These teams can then work together to accomplish the bigger picture.
You can use these goals as a way to measure the success of your marketing or sales efforts and make adjustments as needed. Here are some examples of quantifiable goals:
- Increase awareness about your company
- Increase traffic to your website, blog, or social media pages
- Get more people to sign up for your newsletter or mailing list
Give Employees Time to Build Trust and Camaraderie
The best way to build trust and camaraderie within your organization is to give employees time to get to know each other. This can be a challenge in today’s fast-paced business world, where people are constantly being pulled in different directions.
Consider setting aside time for team-building activities, like lunch or happy hour outings. You could also hold monthly or quarterly meetings where you can catch up with each other on how things are going at work and in life outside of work.
These events will help your employees develop deeper relationships with one another, making it easier for them to work together and solve problems more effectively.
When you hire new people, they need time to get acclimated. They need time to understand your business culture and how things operate around here.
This is especially important if hiring people from outside your industry or organization. They may have trouble understanding how things work at first unless they’re given some context about what’s expected of them as part of their job duties and responsibilities.
Creating trust and camaraderie in the workplace is essential for a company to grow. Employees who feel like they’re part of a team are more likely to go above and beyond for the organization.
Set Expectations for Performance
One of the best ways to create a successful team is by setting expectations from the start. When you have clear expectations for what the team should accomplish, it can make it easier to overcome challenges, stay focused on your goals, and ensure everyone knows what they need to do to reach them.
Here are some ways to set expectations for performance:
- Be clear about what you want each member of your team to do. You may want them all to work together, or you may want them to work independently. Either way, make sure they know what their roles are and what’s expected of them. This will help eliminate any confusion later on when things get tough;
- Share your vision with everyone on the team, so they understand why their work matters and how it fits into the bigger picture of your business or organization. Explain why their efforts are important and how they’ll benefit others within the company or organization as well as those outside it;
- Tell them how their jobs fit into larger projects or initiatives so they have an idea about what’s coming next and how their contributions will contribute toward achieving those goals.
Reward Them for Their Results
To develop cross-functional teams at your business, you need to set up a system that rewards employees for their results. If you’re not careful, you could wind up with a team member who gets rewarded for doing what they’re supposed to do instead of what they’re supposed to do well.
That’s why it’s important to reward them for their results. You want them to focus on the end result and not just the process involved in getting there. Here are some tips for how to reward employees for their results:
- Offer bonuses based on specific outcomes. If you have an employee who’s been working on a project for months, offer them a bonus when it finally comes out successfully. If they help your company bring in new customers or increase sales, give them a reward for that accomplishment;
- Create incentives for team goals as well as individual ones. If everyone works together on a project, make sure everyone gets recognized for their efforts so that no one feels left out or ignored. You can also offer small incentives such as gift cards or movie tickets for reaching certain milestones within a specific timeframe (for example, if everyone meets their individual goals by Friday or if everyone hits 90% of the target by Wednesday);
- Give them something more than just money. Money makes an excellent reward because it’s easy to quantify, but there are many other types of rewards that will also motivate your team members and show them that you care about them as people rather than just workers who get paid for getting things done on time (or even early).
Conclusion
Creating cross-functional teams is not easy, but it’s well worth the effort. The key is to develop clear roles and responsibilities for your team members and ensure they understand how their work impacts the team.
Once that’s in place, you can start thinking about how your team will interact with other departments. This could include scheduling meetings with other departments or managing communication between teams.
And finally, remember that it’s important to recognize the strengths of each person on your team and encourage them! Creating cross-functional teams is all about finding ways for people who don’t normally work together to collaborate effectively and efficiently without sacrificing quality or creativity.
