Top Cross Functional Team Development Tips
Tags: Team Collaboration, Team Building, Cross Functional Teams, Teamwork, Team

There are good tips for cross-functional teams and there are bad tips, these are the former.

We have gone through all the ‘tips’ there are for such teams and selected the best ones for you.

Here are the selection criteria for deriving these tips:

These tips are realistic

They are highly practical

They can be adopted in a flash

The majority of the listicles have these points in common

Why Cross-Functional Teams are Such a Hit?

Before delving further, we need to talk about a couple of things.

Let’s start with a line or two on the definition of a typical cross-functional team.

Simply put, it’s a team consisting of people from various functional departments — having different skill sets and views.

Next on, why do you need tips to set things in motion? It seems pretty easy to put people from various departments together and let the magic begin, right? Wrong.

A study from Harvard Business Review found that almost 75% of such teams are dysfunctional.

That is why you need all the help you can get.

Popular Cross-Functional Team examples include the good folks over at Google, Facebook, Netflix, and Amazon.

8 Best Tips for Cross-Functional Team Development

Here the cross-functional team best practices that we have gathered for you after thorough research based on different facts and applied practices in the industry.

1. Have the Right Kind of Team Members

You can’t hope to succeed without having the proper team members in your team.

Human capital is the most indispensable asset of any workplace.

If you can recruit the best employees for your team, you are ten times more likely to have a better outcome.

Once you get your A-team assembled, it’s time to impart some head-turning words of wisdom.

To do that, have a kickoff meeting scheduled to get everyone on the same page before starting to work. The meeting should topic like:

The common goal

Core members and their roles

How this project benefits all the departments involved

2. Create a Unique Team Identity

Having a common goal is good. Developing a team identity is better.

However, it’s easier said than done.

You have to know every member of the team to come up with an identity of the team that every member can relate to.

When the team has a common identity, the members will have increasingly focused on what they have to do.

Moreover, knowing what your team stands for is a big motivation for employees from all departments.

3. Ensure Excellent Communication

You may be wondering why we added “excellent communication” as part of the tips section.

And you would be right.

But the reason behind including this tip here is that working with such a team calls for a greater emphasis on fast, reliable, and two-way communication.

It won’t work if you try to encourage it once you’re into a week into working. Make sure the communicator is crystal from the get-go.

4. Appoint a Team leader

It may not seem to be a vital point to consider but it has unparalleled benefits.

Having a fantastic team leader gives your team direction.

Cross functional teams without a leader are volatile. They can either produce something amazing or blow right in your face.

A team leader will keep things in check. The chances of conflict are the highest in this type of team.

You take care of that; you are bound to achieve great things.

5. Crystal-Clear Decision-Making Process

Decision making is the core reason behind conflicts in any kind of team.

When people are not clear on who will have the final say? Or who will decide what? It will make things go real bad, real fast.

Set out the entire decision-making process while clearly communicating the role of each member during decisions.

6. Promote Co-creation

It is basically a term used mostly by people in marketing departments. Co-creation means to collaborate and create something that both the parties could not do individually.

For instance, marketing a product requires the production team and advertising team to work in coordination.

Instill the culture of co-creation in your team right from the start to have better results.

7. Make a Charter Template

Yes, a visual charter works the best.

Have your team give their feedback and share ideas on it. The template should be easily understandable so that everyone contributes something.

You can have your own Kanban Board-styled charter that will help the entire team to stay on track and updated about project activities.

8. Involve Department Heads

It will let you exercise greater control over the members and have a better understanding of their working methods.

Departments heads’ input should be incorporated throughout the entire project lifecycle.

There will be times when the department workers may not do a certain task. This is where department heads come in.

Experience counts.

Over to you!

The benefits of cross-functional working outweigh the conventional silo mentality.

Synergies are highly productive. Make the best use of them by taking steps to ensure that people work together without causing issues. It may take time but there’s always a middle ground in every organization.

What other tips would you like to see in this write-up? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below.