Cross functional teams in your organization

In traditional hierarchichal organizations we will find different departments in charge of specific areas like finance, customer service, procurement, IT , etc. This type of structure follows a process in a serial decision-making process but nowadays the term ¨Cross function¨is more common for the companies. A cross-functional team brings together an array of specialists who jointly and simultaneously make design and manufacturing decisions.

 

 

 

By using cross-functional teams, decision-making is decentralised through the use of lateral decision processes. But not everything is for everyone, reason why is important to understand which is the goal you want to accomplish and suit this tool in the process.

You can consider different ways of using the cross- functions:

• Cross-functional Organisation – The whole organisation will be mixed having different talents in new departments like the mix of Hr, IT and production for the recruitment or training process.
• Cross-functional Departments – Within the department, each area will know the whole process of the other person working together to achieve the KPI’s of the department. Like training and development with organisational development, recruitment, medical service, etc.
• Cross-functional Project Team – Temporary team created by an array of specialist focused on a specific goal.

The 4 main benefits you will find using cross-functions are:

• Quick, good and effective decisions – All parts of the problems will be considered because everyone that is involved is on the table.
• Deal with complex issues – Experts from different departments are on the team.
• Same focus  – Everybody works together to achieve results.
• Speeds up organisational learning – The information shared in the table will enrich the knowledge and decision making of everybody.

 

There are some few guidelines to make this successful:

1.  Align it to the vision, mission, values and strategy of the whole company. – Share this information with each of the team members.
2. Team empowerment – Everybody needs to feel that they have the autonomy of taking decisions for the outcomes the business wants.
3. Team representation – Is not only the people who are at the table on that particular team but who they represent back in the functional area.
4. Synergy – people collaborating to generate results.
5. Collaborative decision making – Collaborative decision making probably will take longer because we are considering lots of different points of views and trying to deal with different scenarios to end up finding the best solution.