Unity is strength, as long as the skills of the various members of a team are different. Wanting to go to extremes, we could summarize the concept of cross functional team, which indicates a group of people with different skills (marketing, sales, programming, process management) working for a common purpose. If we look at the reality of most companies, work teams are vertical, specializing on a particular area, be it R&D, communications, sales, and a question may arise: why put completely different profiles together?
The reason is efficiency: such a group of talent is able to bring innovation to the company, solving specific problems faster and more effectively by adopting a methodology of agile. It is no coincidence that Amazon has espoused this philosophy for its growth and makes extensive use of small, heterogeneous teams to always be in the situation referred to as Day 1, that is, growth and experimentation (as opposed to Day 2, stasis and immobility). In Amazon’s case, these groups are leveraged to test new ideas, launch new projects, or solve specific problems. Groups of just a few people, 4 or 5 usually, captained by a leader who charts the direction, and which, being characterized by a variety of skills, can proceed independently and expeditiously in experimentation, without interfering with operational departments and without having to submit to bureaucracy or heavy hierarchies.
The management of cross-functional teams
A cross-functional team, which in Italian can be translated as a cross-functional team, stimulates diversity and promotes innovation: it can focus on specific goals without having to worry about day-to-day operations, and being composed of just a few members, each with their own specificities, it can act extremely quickly, testing and implementing solutions without having to ask for support from other departments or get lost in the complexity of internal hierarchies. However, this is only provided that the members are all well empowered, enjoy a certain amount of autonomy, and above all can rely on precise and defined goals and KPIs. The approach is different from the classical one: still today many companies tend to make decisions within meetings, which are not the most efficient method, on the contrary. Time tends to be wasted, and very often people are involved who might very well not be part of it. Certainly, we have all experienced meetings of this kind, with dozens of people present, most of whom stay silent for the duration of the meeting.
Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, considers them to be a great waste of resources, and for his company-which relies heavily on cross-functional teams-has in fact established precise rules:
- Limit the number of participants. In the case of Amazon, the two-pizza rule applies: there must be enough pizzas to feed the whole group (we are talking about American, large-diameter pizzas, which they usually sell cut into slices and divided among the participants, not the classic Neapolitan pizza).
- No to powerpoints, considered by Bezos to be an inefficient tool. Much better a small memo of a few pages, written in narrative form (no bullet points), to explain objectives, difficulties to be addressed, and KPIs to be monitored.
- A half-hour silence. Before kicking off the meeting, Bezos asks all participants to read the memo thoroughly, so as to make sure that everyone is aligned with the same goal. It goes without saying that this memo cannot be a series of scattered notes, but while brief, it must contain all the salient information. And no, half an hour to write it is not enough. Often not even a day.
It should be pointed out that even the eclectic Elon Musk frowns on river meetings full of people, and suggests that his employees not take part in a meeting, or leave a meeting, if they have nothing to say on the subject.
But how do these cross-functional teams coordinate without meetings?
This is where technology comes in, particularly applications to manage projects and workflows. Popular are those that take up the methodology Kanban, which allow all stages of the process to be followed effectively. And of course, direct contact is essential: one of the key aspects of cross-functional teams is precisely the absence of hierarchy. There is a leader, it is true, who gives direction, but the small size of the team and the high empowerment of each member allow direct, unfiltered communication aimed at solving problems or carrying out experimentation in a direct manner.
The mistakes not to make
Cross-functional teams can be a key resource for business growth, but it is not enough to just randomly take people from various departments and put them together and hope that something positive will come out of it. If you want to be successful, it is essential first to define precise goals and timelines: this does not mean doing things in a hurry and in a rush, but being clear about the end point (which can be optimizing a process, but also creating a new product/service) and defining KPIs that allow you to assess the project’s progress at any time.
Another point on which much attention is needed is the focus of these teams. As already mentioned, they consist of people from different departments who are put to work on a common goal. These people, however, need to change their approach from the usual way of working: they should not stand up for their department. The goal is common, and that is what the efforts must be focused on. Although this will probably result in a greater workload for one or more members.
Last but not least is leadership. Both of those who will lead the group, but more importantly of the group itself: if innovation is to be brought, it is essential that the cross-functional team has a lot of authority and can therefore “impose” its decisions and methods. Otherwise, they would be vain efforts.
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