Cross-Functional Teams – A Choice For A Change

admin

Administrator

September 29, 2020

Last updated: March 30, 2022

Table of Contents

Cross-Functional Teams – An Exceptional Team With One Common End Goal

Anything that gets started centering “For A Change” always finds a fresh view and vibe. In that way, Cross-Functional Teams is a concept where the team includes representatives from various departments with different functional skills to work together on a specific task.

The various departments in cross-functional teams can range from development, operations, marketing to designers within an organization. The key responsibility of the cross-functional team is to carry out all phases of a program right from start to finish. Organizations take a great advantage from cross-functional teams because they can lead to increased innovation and productivity.

The cross-functional team is more efficient as everyone involved gets the chance to identify any potential problems or conflicts in the project even before they get implemented. Also, having different departments represented on a single team opens up different ways of thinking and naturally develops ways to combine forces and bring about new solutions. In this article let see the real purpose and benefits of cross-functional teams.

Real Purposes Of Cross-Functional Teams

When members across departments work as a team in collaboration, they become more efficient, exhibit faster work completion, and build good team spirit due to the change in routine. Now, here are a few benefits that cross-functional teams make possible in an organization.

Expanding Organizational Limits

In many divisions of a company, there may be cases and possibilities for lack of information sharing or idea sharing within the team members. This sets up the root idea of building cross-functional teams as they aid to break the chains.

In building the CFTs they go beyond the boundaries of an organization to make sure that the right skilled employees from different departments are brought together to work cohesively.

This being a new work environment brings people closer and enables them to understand each other’s perspectives and share ideas. So in a way, Cross-functional teams transform operative margins and make a means for continuous exchange of ideas and knowledge.

Reduces Cycle Time

According to the business dictionary, cycle time is nothing but the time required to complete one cycle of a project from start to finish. Concerning a project, cycle time is simply the duration between a demand made by a customer for a service and the delivery time.

At times due to various reasons, the assigned team takes a long while to deliver the outcome. In such events, the relationship between the customer and the company degrades. In extreme cases, this can also negatively affect the company’s bottom line.

However, when skilled people form a CFT and work together, there arises a lot of benefits, most importantly problem-solving gets easier and faster. Also, team members get to define their area of expertise for the project and divide the tasks accordingly. This way of allocating and defining the purpose, allows teams to get the job done at a faster rate.

Decision Making

Generally, teamwork gets its remarkable success when there prevails a healthy space of making collective decisions and arriving at a unison together. As a team, works together they come up with numerous alternatives to a problem and drive effective decision-making at any instant.

More in a cross-functional team, it holds people from sales, marketing to the operations department so when a problem arises these different departments make sure to understand the problem from a sales, marketing, and operations point of view. This ensures that no aspect of a problem is uncovered and come up with a solution that benefits the customer and the entire business.

A Fresh Perspective

Over a point of time working alone can grow wearisome or working with a team with the same area of expertise can be tedious too. In such cases, Cross-functional teams fit perfectly into the equation as it creates an ambiance to look at things from a fresh perspective and share knowledge with people of diverse skill sets.

A pool of diverse professional expertise is where very innovative ideas originate and solutions stand for even problems or flaws that went unnoticed.

Regulates Internal Communication

Working collectively opens up space for many things, even sometimes they get on a debate with each other’s decisions but it brings them closer and aids team building. It lets people see how their team members arrive at a conclusion and their thought process.

Communication plays a vital role as for teams to be strong, they need to know what every member is up to and this is possible only when groups have good internal communication.

A team that communicates well internally tends to have more brainstorming sessions and bounces off more ideas. They also try to understand what’s best for the team than the individual and how each member can fulfill their roles effectively.

Creating A Cross-Functional Team – Keys & Tips

Developing a highly skilled cross-functional team is very essential to avoid and deflect any drawback scenario. In today’s era of improved management skills, it has become quite easy to build up the best team possible knowing the problems to focus and fix.

Assemble The Right Team

For the right start, the first step is to figure out the kind of employees who can help in achieving the project objective. In this part, human resources can help to recognize employees of the exact requirements.

Most importantly, the real need is to recognize if the employees will be able to play on each other’s strengths. As, how cross-functional team functions will depend on the kind of team they are.

Assign Roles And Objectives

Great practice in building successful cross-functional teams is to set down objectives having clear goals. Precise objectives tend to improve collaboration, communication, and help the business grow.

Also, knowing the goal and delegate tasks, helps team members to understand how exactly they can contribute and to easily strategize and divide tasks among themselves.

Involve The Customer

Involving and Interacting with the customer itself allows teams to be clear about the expected outcome by the customer. Updating the customers at regular intervals, taking their feedback, and proceeding accordingly regulates clarity and sync between the customer and the team.

Involving the customer comes in handy to ensure that the project proceeds smoothly and finishes in time aiming the original goal.

Embrace Diversity & Inclusion

As important is assembling a diverse team so is to make this team feel important and included. On some cause, if any of the team members feel they are not as valuable as their peers, then they might fall out of the team.

Sometimes this may lead the team to lose out on a skilled employee because of which the project cycle time may increase. To avoid this everyone in the team should be allowed to express their views and opinions.

Project Management Tools & Metrics

Online tools for recruitment, communication, and project management are all the rage now with the advent of technology and AI in business. While managing cross-functional teams the project management tools can be used as a great commodity. These tools keep track of time, budget, expenses, and to remain in sync.

Metrics like time management tools can keep track of employee performance and progress. Measurement and Metrics are what makes space for progress and improvement.

Conclusion

To sum up, the concept of the cross-functional team has strengthened bonds across departments, provides better views on projecting issues, furnishes valuable insight and flow of information, and sets mutual trust towards skills and responsibilities.

Even though cross-functional teams get carried out of a desire for increased productivity and innovation, the true value of cross-functional teams lies with the positive impact they can have on a company, the people, and the culture. Accounting this build your cross-functional teams and remain dynamic, complement each other, work quickly and make way for the change.

Also Read, Importance of Work Life Balance – Pay Attention Untill It’s Too Late!