The Joy of working with cross-functional teams!

Here’s what worked for me, driving 15+ teams to achieve successful business transformations

When you are driving huge transformation programs, with more than 15 teams from various functions, multiple organisations and from across continents, the focus is on ensuring that this medley of teams delivers beyond expectations.

It does not matter whether you are executing a transformation in UK, US, ME or Asia, the fundamentals are the same.

The foundation is so simple that you will usually overlook it. Individuals.

Individuals make up the teams, teams drive the transformation. At the heart of every program there are the people working hard and smart to ensure that we meet the vision of the program. Everyone in the team is an individual first. And individuals come with,

• A need to understand the complete picture
• A curiosity about how their pieces fit into the bigger jigsaw puzzle
• The expectation that their performance will be recognized appropriately
• A drive to learn and implement exciting stuff
• A propensity to network and establish collaborative relations with the rest of the team members

The best of the processes will not work and the best of the technology choices will not perform, if the people aren’t with you, standing shoulder-to-shoulder.

What really drives teams? Source: https://rework.withgoogle.com/blog/five-keys-to-a-successful-google-team/

I have driven transformations with the # of teams ranging from 4 (3 participating organizations, 40 members) to 15+ (7+ organizations, 250+ members).

Here is a compilation of what worked for me:

1. Establish clarity on the overall objectives: This is to be clear across the levels. The clearer the understanding, the easier is the navigation. And yes, you never know where amazing suggestions are going to come from!
2. Set the expectations from each team involved: Break down the silos! Every team has a role to play and a piece of the action to deliver. What is to be delivered, quality expectations, time and formats are all to be plainly communicated and agreed upon. Of course, there are dependences to be addressed, as we shall see in a bit.
3. Agree on the processes and the communication expected: Communication plays a vital role. From the format of the status reports to the milestone dashboards, each aspect is to be clarified and a process established. We do not want teams attending meetings without preparation or not raising flags at the right time to the right folks. Ensuring constant interaction among functions will help everyone to consider and understand different perspectives, and how those perspectives impact the program.
4. Lineate clear ownership of deliverables: Programs are like Relay races. The deliverables from one team forms the input for the successive team and so on. The clearer the deliverables definition, the fewer the handshaking problems. For example the marketing team needs to understand the product better so as to communicate to customer clearly, and the product design team needs to ensure that the features implemented are understood by the development team and explained well to the sales teams.
5. Track RAID – Risks, Assumptions, Issues and Dependencies: Tracked on a daily basis and containing the inputs from across all teams. This single tracker has the propensity to save tremendous effort while highlighting challenges at the right time.
6. Establish the current project as the ‘home’: A clear measure of the impact using metrics-driven performance valuations. Regular reporting to verticals/functions and a mandatory status sharing/discussion with the folks up the hierarchy for each team will ensure performance and expectations are highlighted on a timely basis..
7. Emphasise on ‘Succeeding Together’. irrespective of the amount of contribution by the individual teams and functions.

When handled right, cross-functional teams will be able to exceed expectations quite easily, considering the abundance of experience and the the multiple perspectives brought to the table