When working with different teams or departments within your company, sometimes, you might find that you are at odds with each other. You might even end up fighting for resources despite working towards the same overarching goals of the business.
According to a Deloitte study, 83% of digitally maturing companies use cross-functional teams. Its high adoption is a strong signal about the importance of cross-functional teams as a necessary part of every company.
In order to develop cross-functional collaboration, the keys to success include alignment on tools and objectives, transparency, and good communication. In this blog post, we will provide actionable tips on how your team can improve how it collaborates with other teams (and vice versa).
What is cross-functional collaboration?
Put simply, cross-functional collaboration is when team members from different departments or areas of expertise work together to complete a task or project. The purpose of cross-functional collaboration is to share knowledge, ideas, and best practices across teams in order to improve the overall quality of work. And when teams collaborate well together, you’ll speed up the completion of tasks and create more impactful projects.
Successful cross-functional collaboration can lead to increased productivity and efficiency, improved communication and information sharing, and enhanced innovation. Combining these elements can help any business thrive.
The rest of this post will cover five tactics that will help improve your team’s cross-functional collaboration, no matter how large or small your company is.
1. Decide on and use the right tools to facilitate collaboration
A video meeting in Dialpad Meetings
There are a number of factors to consider when deciding which tools to use for cross-functional collaboration. The first is to consider the needs of your team and the type of work that needs to be done.
For example, if your product team is trying to understand customer pain points, it’ll be helpful for them to have access to the customer service systems that your company uses to do their research. If your team is working on a project that requires working with different teams within the company, good project management software is essential to have in order to run things smoothly.
Once your team has decided on the type of work that needs to be done, you can start to narrow down the list of potential tools. There are a number of factors to consider, including:
- Ease of use: Your team should choose tools that are easy to use and that everyone on the team is comfortable with. Otherwise, they will spend more time trying to figure out how to use the tools than actually collaborating.
- Cost: Your team should consider the cost of the tools, both in terms of money and in terms of time. Some tools may be free to use, but they may be more time-consuming to learn how to use.
- Compatibility: Your team should make sure that the tools they choose are compatible with each other. For example, if your team is using Salesforce to track leads and you’re looking to add a voip call center as a new tool for your team, you should look into ones that integrates with Salesforce so that all of your information is streamlined.
- Security: Your team should choose tools that are secure and will protect the team’s work as well as client information.
2. Align on objectives
Cross-functional collaboration will only be successful if everyone is on the same page regarding objectives. First, try to understand each other’s objectives and key performance indicators (KPIs). Have an open space to discuss what your goals are and learn what are the goals of the other teams. This helps find and identify common grounds.
Another approach is to develop a shared understanding of the problem that needs to be solved. You can do this during a project’s kick-off meeting and create a problem statement that includes the following:
- The goal that needs to be achieved
- The target audience
- The pain points that need to be addressed
- The proposed solution
This problem statement should be created by the teams that are going to be working on the project or sprint. Once it has been created, it should be reviewed and approved by all stakeholders. This will ensure that everyone is aware of the objectives and is working towards the same goal.
After this initial kick-off meeting, you’ll likely want to schedule regular meetings with the key stakeholders to sync on the progress on goals and blockers. Just be careful to avoid what Harvard Business Review calls collaboration overload, or a high volume of time spent collaborating (as opposed to doing deep work), since that can negatively affect productivity.
3. Be transparent and accountable
Transparency and accountability are key when it comes to cross-functional collaboration. All team members should feel comfortable sharing information and ideas freely. Furthermore, everyone should be aware of their roles and responsibilities within the team. This way, everyone knows what is expected of them and can be held accountable for their contributions.
One way to foster transparency and accountability is to use a tool like JIRA, which allows everyone to see what tasks are assigned to whom, and how those tasks are progressing.
Another way to promote transparency is to have regular check-ins or stand-ups, where everyone shares what they are working on and any challenges they are facing. These check-ins help to ensure that everyone is on the same page and that no one is falling behind. Just make sure to set the right cadence for the different teams involved since you don’t want to overwhelm people.
Lastly, it is important to celebrate successes together as a team. This not only builds morale, but also reinforces the importance of working together collaboratively.
4. Set aside time for team building
Hosting team activities to improve collaboration
Aside from regular meetings, it’s important to also schedule in time for team building across your different cross-functional teams. This helps each team get to know each other and build trust. There are many activities you can do, but some popular ones include team lunches, after-work activities, virtual celebrations, and bonding exercises.
One way to bond is to have each person share something about themselves that others may not know. This can be something fun or serious, and it helps everyone to get to know each other on a personal level. It also doesn’t have to be its own standalone activity — you can set this up as a quick ice breaker at the beginning of each quarterly meeting.
Another way to build trust is to have team members share their strengths and weaknesses with each other. You can even turn this into a game and have everyone anonymously share their biggest strength and weakness, then ask people to guess who submitted what.
No matter how you approach these activities, these exercises help each team know what they can rely on each other for, and what areas they may need to work on. Also, keep in mind that you should do things that everyone enjoys and can participate in. Avoid team-building activities that might exclude certain team members.
5. Have retrospective meetings
Using Miro for whiteboarding
Although generally, you should avoid packing your team’s schedule with unnecessary meetings, having a retrospective meeting is a key part of how you can improve cross-functional collaboration.
Retrospective meetings are held after the completion of a project or sprint. They provide an opportunity for team members to reflect on what went well and what could be improved. Hold a retrospective meeting to discuss the following questions:
- What went well?
- What didn’t go well?
- What could be improved?
- What did we learn?
To do this, you can use a whiteboarding tool like Miro and split the canvas into 4 sections — one for each of the above questions. Have every team member that worked on the cross-team project write down their answer to each of the questions on a sticky note. Each person can create multiple sticky notes for one question if needed.
Then, reconvene as a group using your video conferencing software of choice, share the whiteboard, and have everyone talk about their answers. Have each team member share their thoughts and ideas on how cross-functional collaboration can be improved for the next project.
Remember that these meetings should be constructive and focused on finding solutions to improve the team’s collaboration, as opposed to calling out each other’s faults.
After the completion of your project and retrospective meeting, be sure to also keep track of performance and share that with the greater team. Again, make sure to not only celebrate your wins, but also each other’s wins.
Collaborate with the right tools and mindset
Improving cross-functional collaboration takes time, effort, and patience, but it’s worth it in the end for a more successful organization.
By taking the time to get on the same page about the tools you’ll use to collaborate, choosing the best tools for your team boosts overall productivity and provides a place to keep track of important information and deadlines. After agreeing on tools, next is aligning on objectives to ensure that each team starts on the right foot.
When collaborating on a cross-functional project, remember to be transparent and accountable since you’ll need to rely on each other to get things done. Set aside time for team building helps you to get to know each other and build trust. And at the end of your project, having a retrospective meeting will help your team be better equipped to handle anything that comes your way the next time you collaborate together.
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