Large-scale, complex projects normally mean a project team made up of various different disciplines. Cross-functional teams are fantastic to work in. Everyone pulls together towards a common goal and you can see how different professions and expertise contribute. However, they can also be challenging to lead.
Projects have historically used cross-functional teams, but if you are coming into the project environment from a line management or operational job, you might not have a lot of experience in how to bring together diverse individuals to create a cohesive team – especially if the individuals don’t work for you.
We think that the world of project delivery is becoming more complex. When you throw in third party suppliers and vendors as well, the project teams we see are made up of many different subject matter experts. So how can you get the best out of everyone, even if they work for different organizations and bring different skills to the table? That’s what we’re going to cover in this article.
Why use cross-functional teams?
Cross-functional teams are simply those that are made up of individuals who have their ‘base’ in a different area. You might have a construction expert, a marketing expert, a customer services representative, a finance manager, a quality analyst, and many other disciplines depending on what is required by your project. The variety of views, backgrounds and experiences make for a rich pool of knowledge that will help propel your project forward. You should be able to approach problems and tasks from multiple angles and come up with well-rounded solutions.
As well as having diverse skill sets, typically, cross-functional teams:
- Have a shared goal
- Have autonomy to get things done
- Need extra support with technology as some members of the team might not have access to the same tools as everyone else.
Cross-functional teams are essential for tackling complex projects because you need a variety of skills and expertise to deal with the challenges of a difficult, complex initiative. For example, on a recent project, it felt like a relatively straightforward piece of work, but we hit an issue with tax and needed to call in a tax expert. Without his expertise we would have not been able to progress, and I’m sure that’s common on many projects.
In fact, these days it’s hard to think of a project that wouldn’t need a cross-functional team. From product development to process improvement, you’ll nearly always need to bring people together to deliver something new.
Key leadership skills for managing diverse teams
As you can imagine, there are lots of leadership skills required for managing diverse teams. For example leaders have to be experts at communicating. They need to be adaptable and have empathy. When you are managing different team members, they each bring something to the project but because you are not necessarily their line manager you have to manage the relationships between experts using a matrix structure.
Additionally, a cross-functional team may not share the same goals so one of the things the leader has to do is make sure that there is a sense of common purpose. This is especially true if members of the team work for different organizations.
Managing conflicts and aligning team goals
As we saw above, it’s really important that the team has a common goal to work towards. As the leader you can make it easy for people to see the goal identify with the vision and understand the common objectives. You can add these to a poster add them to a screensaver on a computer or just constantly reiterate them when you are in project meetings.
Another consideration is that subject matter experts often come in and out of a project and they may not work on the project for the full duration. You’ll need to quickly have a process to bring people up to speed quickly so they can understand the project’s goals and align their work to the needs of the project.
Encouraging teamwork
One of the big challenges with cross-functional teams is that team members can get into the habit of working in silos back in their base unit and that makes it hard for them to share information across departments and within the project team. You probably already know that transparency and fostering collaboration are really important for project success so as leaders it’s essential that we work to make sure there are collaboration tools communication plans and a common project schedule that everyone can access and understand.
Encouraging teamwork and information sharing is something that you will have to do throughout the life of the project. As you set the culture and expectations for the team they may get more and more comfortable sharing information between themselves calling up a colleague to collaborate directly or you may find that you as the leader are still the bottleneck for the team. The larger the team, the more important it is to avoid that bottleneck.
Strong leadership can help cross-functional teams overcome the challenges of siloed working and lack of collaboration to deliver a project successfully. You probably don’t need to do an awful lot different to how you are leading project teams today but be aware that when you’ve got a large proportion of your team coming from different disciplines or external suppliers then you’ll need to work extra hard to make sure that there is alignment, communication and shared ways of working.