Organizations must be able to create and maintain effective alliances across departments. These cross-functional relationships can increase quality, conserve resources, and speed response time. Although most managers recognize the importance of cross-functional teams, few organizations effectively build and nurture these relationships. This article describes the challenge of building these teams and suggests practical tools you can use to increase the teams' effectiveness.

Recognizing the Challenge
A few years ago a colleague and I were asked to help a small company examine the effectiveness of its engineering unit. That unit had been targeted as the one responsible for recent problems in efficiency and quality.

We met with the engineers, and, of course, they had some problems-- everyone does. But as we looked closer, we could see that the major problems were not the fault of this unit alone. Instead, they came from what the engineers referred to as the "cart-by-the-door" phenomenon. The sales office would meet with customers, write specifications for a new product, pile the documents on a cart and literally wheel it down to the engineers. The engineers would design appropriate plans, place their work on the cart and push it down to the manufacturing end of the building. Engineers and craftspeople often had questions about the directives left on the cart, yet seldom asked the other unit for clarification. It was as if the cart were the only allowable way of contacting another unit.

We met with senior management. Instead of agreeing that the problem resided with engineering we suggested they look in another direction – managing the communication among all departments. They stared blankly at us, thanked us for our work, and promised to keep our names on file. We were perplexed; we could not understand how they could miss what seemed so obvious.

Since then I have seen the cart by the door many times. I catch a glimpse of it whenever I hear of mangled communications between units, duplication of effort, missed opportunities, and when members of one department point fingers at colleagues down the hall.

It is relatively easy to see why the cart appears in large, complex organizations. Attempting to coordinate work among many units, external suppliers, across international borders, and often in different languages is extremely difficult. Yet while problems do increase in complexity with the addition of each variable, the fundamental cart phenomenon occurs everywhere. It can be seen in large corporations, in departments of 500, and in tiny offices. Whenever information must cross one boundary into another – order entry to billing, sales to service, doctors to nurses, central administration to schools, planning to operations; internal supplier to internal customer – you may find the ubiquitous cart.

We need to find ways to remove the cart. One effective approach is to create cross-functional teams that address issues that transcend the boundaries of a single team.

Barriers to Forming Cross-Functional Teams
There are three major reasons why these teams are so difficult to create.

History
Virtually all organizations are divided into departments, divisions, and branches. That was traditionally a logical way to divide labor. With the growth of the large organization it made sense to put the accountants together to crunch numbers, marketing whiz's together to do their magic, and all other like minded souls together to carry out their specific functions. This worked pretty well. Things got done.

But then, life changed. Customers began demanding higher quality and quicker response time. Organizations found that they could capture market advantage if they could define an opportunity and get a new product to market quickly. But the old vertical silos worked too slowly.

People tended to blame the slow response on other departments, and, over time, animosity often developed between departments. It was "those fools" over in Department X that kept holding things up. "Those jerks" in Chicago who demanded mountains of paperwork. We rarely identified problems within our own departments. After all, we understood one another – we spoke the same language, did similar jobs, even dressed pretty much the same.

Myths developed about those strange people over there in that department. New employees learned these folk tales without ever even having met any of those gorgons up on the tenth floor.

Then came the age of the flatter organization, where partnership is now the buzzword of the day. Although we sit at the same table and all speak the language of cooperation, these historical feuds, perceptions, and war stories keep us from engaging honestly with our counterparts.

If we truly see those other people as slow-witted or working against the best interests of the company, it makes sense that we would avoid engaging in open dialogue with them about pressing business problems.

Rewards and Punishments
It has often been said that what gets rewarded gets done. The counterpart, of course is, what gets punished gets avoided.

A few years ago I was working with an information systems department that wanted to improve its billing operations. Everyone seemed to agree that this was an important task. In order to make improvements, representatives from across this part of the organization would need to cooperate. People were assigned to the team and work began. Although most participants said they felt the project was major, and said they were glad that the company was finally doing something about the billing problem, no one made much of a commitment to the meetings. People sent substitutes or came late and left early.

When asked how on the one hand they could support this initiative and on the other try to get out of working on it, the participants replied that every minute spent in this meeting took them away from their "real work." Their bosses would only rate them on work done within their own unit – not on this project. Commitment to this project meant they ran the risk of lower ratings and bonuses.

Structure
In fact, all large organizations are hard wired to support the effective workings of discrete departments. Management structures, communications systems, performance reviews, sometimes even compensation systems are designed to facilitate work within departments.

We lack systems to link the boxes on the organizational chart. Working between departments in akin to entering a world where there are no rules. When we attempt to link up with our colleagues in another department nothing in the organizational structure supports these meetings.

How to Begin
If it is hard to build traditional teams within departments (and it is), it is exponentially more difficult to create cross-functional teams for all the reasons mentioned above. In my experience, these teams don't build themselves. They need help.

The Work of the Sponsor
Most important, those sponsoring this team need to do some important and sometimes challenging work well before this cross-functional team ever meets. The sponsor(s) must:

Create a Single Overarching Mission Statement
This statement must explain why the team is being assembled and what it is expected to accomplish. For example, "the purpose of this team is to create a unified billing process that facilitates rapid and accurate billing reports." Just as important, by implication, the mission statement must suggest what the team will not tackle. For example, "the purpose of the TQM Steering Committee is to oversee the quality improvement process and select recommendations to implement. The Steering Committee's work will be limited to those quality improvement suggestions that can be controlled within this facility. Quality improvement ideas that require cooperation of other plants or facilities will be referred to senior management."

Teams Are Empowered to Act
The sponsor(s) must delegate authority to these teams. If a team's job is to recommend new order tracking software, they must be assured that if they do solid work their ideas will be implemented.

People Are Rewarded for Participating In These Teams
However the organization handles compensation, it must find ways to reward people for their work on these teams. Hearty handshakes aren't sufficient.

A Structure Is Created to Support These Teams
The team will need all the support it can get. The sponsor(s) must ensure that it will be easy for this team to do its job. They will need to be able to meet and communicate easily. They will need to have direct access to those who supply valuable input to the team, and equal access to the recipients of their work. In other words, the traditional chain-of-command must be abolished for these people. They will become discouraged and their efforts will stall if they have to go to their boss who will go to her counterpart across the hall who will relay a message to one of his staff members.

Pick The Right People
Pick people who are eager to work on this task. Everything else is secondary. Try for a balance between departments. Try to get a good mix of the skills and experience needed to complete the task. But first pick people who want to be there.

Allow Sufficient Time
These teams need time to do the work. Examine the mission and set realistic time frames for the group to complete its work. If this is a team that must tackle complex critical tasks, they will probably need lots of dedicated time. Scheduling a few one hour blocks will probably be insufficient. Revisit this decision soon after the team begins its work and change the time allocations as needed.

The Team's Responsibilities
Team Building
Cross-functional teams need time to address issues regarding their structure and work process. Take at least a day (preferably two days) away from phones and beepers to allow these people to get to know each other and do the critical work of forming the group. During this time, the team should do the following:

	Begin to get to know each other.
	Make sure everyone understands the work of the team.
	Determine how the team will work together: How will it make decisions?
	Who will chair meetings?
	How will it assess progress?
	How will it identify and work on team issues such as someone dominating discussions?
	Determine how it will communicate with the sponsor(s).

Identify the potential barriers to effective work and begin to determine ways to address these obstacles if they should occur. 

Monitor Progress
The team needs to monitor its work regularly on two levels: the work of the team itself and its relationship to the sponsor(s). On a regular basis the team should let the sponsor(s) know how the relationship is working. Is the team getting the support it needs in order to work effectively. In turn, the sponsor periodically should provide feedback to the team.

What to Watch Out For
Resistance
When you tamper with ingrained management practices, communication patterns, rewards, and so forth people are threatened. It disrupts their familiar world. It is difficult to know the rules. So, well-meaning people (usually senior mangers) resist. If you are a senior manager, just admit it. This team is a threat. You are delegating away something that was once yours. You may resist in many ways: one favorite way is to deny you're resisting!

There is nothing wrong with resistance if we can admit that it exists. I find that its power to subvert is strongest when we fail to recognize it in ourselves.

Task Forces
Task forces with only the authority to recommend are usually a waste of time. Not because they do bad work, but because task forces often do their jobs too well. Task forces find things out. They begin to see areas where the emperors are not dressed quite right. Their reports often rock and threaten the status quo. When this happens, the reports are buried. (Of course sometimes task forces are created just to get the heat off. Like some Presidential Commissions they only give the appearance that something is being done about a major problem. Task forces assembled for xx reasons are a waste of talent – and time.)

Half-Hearted Endorsement
Since few can argue with the logic of cooperation across the organization on pressing issues, it is easy to nod assent when we really want to say no. I have seen eager young teams take their charge seriously, only to learn later that their bosses didn't support the new team. Every idea, every request was met with silence. Not only do these teams lose hope, but their failure to produce results sends the message through the organization that nothing ever changes. People are reluctant to volunteer again.

Moving Ahead
Watch for the cart by your door. It may appear as work from a supplier that doesn't meet your requirements, directives from an internal customer that don't make sense, a missed opportunity as a competitor gets into a market more quickly than you. Be thankful when you have located the cart; this gives you an opportunity to meet with others to begin examining what subterranean and structural issues are at play.

In a world that wants change to be painless and immediate it may be tempting to go for the quick fix. This article suggests a way to begin working with cross-functional teams that goes beyond the quick hit.

Once these teams begin to function well, leadership should look for more and more opportunities to remove barriers to effective work. Ideally, organizations would encourage virtual teams that would be created easily as needs arose and disband just as quickly when the job was completed.

As cross-functional teamwork increases, organizations may begin to look a bit like the emerging European Community. Travel and trade are made easy while the rich cultural history of each of its member countries is maintained.

© 2009 Rick Maurer. Rick uses his Change without Migraines™ to advise organizations on how to lead change effectively. He is author of many books including Beyond the Wall of Resistance. Recently, he created the Change Management Open Source Project, a free
resource for people interested in change in organizations. www.beyondresistance.com