Cross-functional Team Building

Organizations, in both private and public sectors, are always team based. The programs, projects, taskforces and working groups are get done. All organizations are concerned to position themselves in the knowledge economy and turn their employees to a managed asset. The reality of cross-functional team building is the majority of knowledge sharing and innovation with organizations occurs through people interacting with people – especially within networks, teams that cross conventional organizational boundaries. Cross-functional teams can represent the face of organizational learning.

Cross-functional teams typically consist of individuals with a functional home base but work collaboratively on issues requiring diverse resources. There are four key areas which distinguish cross-functional teamwork form more conventional teams. They are functional diversity, competing identities, integration in the organizational structure and performance expectation.

Factors of Cross-functional Team Building:

Team members must be open-minded and highly motivated. They must come from the correct functional areas.  A strong team leader with excellent communication skills and a position of authority is needed.  The team must have both the authority and the accountability to accomplish the mission it has been given. Management must provide adequate resources and support for the team, both moral and financial.  Adequate communications must exist in teams.

Establishing a Cross-Functional Team (CFT):

When Cross- functional Teams s are first convened, conflict may be the result. There is a good chance that some of the members of the new team have bumped heads in the past when their functional areas clashed over a project.  The best way to solve conflicts is to set clear goals for the team. It is important to start with a general goal, such as improving quality, but more specific goals should be set almost immediately to give the group a common bond and to ensure that everyone is working together towards the goal. Goals are easier to establish if research has been conducted by someone in the organization before the team is convened. This allows the team to jump right into goal-setting and problem-solving without getting bogged down in background research.

When setting goals, it is important to clearly define the problem that needs to be solved, not the solution that needs to be achieved. If the desired solution is held up as the outcome and the range of options is narrowed to fit that solution before the team even begins its work. Also, when setting goals, the team should determine if there are operating limits that it faces. The team must recognize these limitations and work around them if it hopes to be successful in reaching its goal. This helps in establishing a cross-functional team building network.

Questions:

• How to establish a cross-functional team building network?
• Explain the key factors involving in cross-functional teams.