Sometimes, if we are really paying attention, we can witness subtle yet impressive business stories unfolding right in front of our eyes. These business successes can happen without the team even realizing that they are doing something amazing. I’m happy to share this story and the learning that I see behind the scenes with the hope that all readers can take a piece of this success and apply it into their own business situations.
This particular example revolves around the tough task of organizing and driving a cross-functional business team to work together, make decisions together to ensure the best business results. It involves weekly calls with over 20 regular participants dialing in from locations all over the US. These participants represent senior leadership team members, managers and individual contributions from virtually every department in the company. Normally, I’d say that composite is a potential recipe for disaster — but it works seamlessly.
So what is the magic that makes cross-functional teamwork succeed?
There are actually five distinct and interlocking factors:
FACTOR ONE: Organized Facilitated Meetings
Before the weekly meetings start, the designated facilitator is working behind the scenes to check in with all team members who will have an action item update that is needed for the next meeting. It reminds all participants to be prepared at the meeting to help guide updates and inform decisions.
At the start of the meeting, there is a verbal overview of the key topics to cover and the order in which the content will unfold.
The facilitator tracks decisions, questions and action items. The facilitator is not the owner of these decisions, questions or actions, but understands the facets of those issues and can chime in when answers are not clear.
THE END RESULT: Meetings run smoothly, participants are informed and more likely to engage, and having a facilitator track everything makes it easy to put together a post-meeting recap. This may seem like an obvious success factor, but it is something that I personally don’t see enough of in most cross-functional team interactions.
FACTOR TWO: Leaders Participate, But Don’t Dominate Discussions
It is common to exclude senior leaders from routine cross-functional discussions until there are more formal milestone report outs that come with executive summary slides and shiny stories about the initiative’s success to date. While that scenario sounds great at the surface, what looms beneath are too many situations where the leadership team member hears about a milestone update and then disagrees and sends the team in the opposite direction. At that point, team member morale plummets and individuals start complaining about all of the rework needed.
Having senior leaders involved in more of the day-to-day initiative conversations helps to course-correct at the beginning, and keeps team members from wasting valuable time on tasks that aren’t relevant.
THE END RESULT: Team members are more inspired and feel closer to knowing the goals of the initiative when they can hear about that directly from their senior leader participants.
FACTOR THREE: Everyone Has a Voice in the Initiative
The downfall of senior leaders participating in regular cross-functional team meeting discussions is that it can be easy for those leaders to consciously or subconsciously dominate the meeting. In those instances, individual contributors or entry-level managers might become quiet and feel like it is not their place to share thoughts or opinions with the team.
The group I witnessed however had the opposite behavior. While senior leaders were participating, they were always stopping to ask others in the group for their ideas and input to find the best outcome for the company. It was common for 12-15 people to have something to contribute and sometimes contradict each other (in a positive way).
THE END RESULT: What I witnessed was an honest and open discussion where all participants knew the goal was to think about “What is the best cross-functional result?” – not what the leadership team thought the company should do. Great innovation happens when all participants feel safe to voice their opinion openly, and that their opinion matters, even if it is not the end decision or will go against their leader’s opinion. The entire group (and the organization) can benefit from these insights that might have otherwise never been surfaced.
FACTOR FOUR: Clear Decisions Were Made in Meetings
It is one thing to have a constructive discussion. Having a positive discussion and taking time to make decisions in a meeting (not defer them) and ensuring everyone understands the decisions and rationale behind them is much more difficult.
The practice can be as simple as the facilitator or any participant saying “What I hear you saying,” or “What I think I’m hearing about the decision we need to make is xxxxx.” That type of interaction encourages other commentary and gets more challenging topics out in the open.
In the meetings that I have witnessed, every time there is a decision, there is a pause to repeat that decision and see if anyone has any reservations about the decision that was just made. The best time to uncover concerns is before implementation, not after all the work is done.
THE END RESULT: This subtle process of repeating the decision and pausing for feedback encourages faster decision making and limits confusion about what the group has agreed upon, and how that impacts the initiative as a whole.
FACTOR FIVE: Detailed Notes/Actions Captured for the Next Discussion
Again, this seems like a no brainer…but often isn’t a standard business practice.
This particular group not only captures notes and actions through the primary facilitator, but also has reporting captured behind the scenes for every action item that was started, and a designated target date and comparable actual completion date.
Months after an action is completed, people can still find those actions and dates in reporting. This tracking helps to enable macro reporting trends and find areas where the company can speed up future similar initiatives or learn about those areas where actions were slowed down.
THE END RESULT: While you don’t need to do additional deep tracking and reporting, keeping a list of the decision, actions needed, target date, and actual completion date will help all the members of the team stay on track, know what the progress is at any given moment, and make it easier to note changes should a project require course-correction.
How We Can Help
If you are struggling with your own cross functional team initiatives, don’t hesitate to reach out to Corporate Path Leadership. We can help guide you to better (and faster) outcomes. Our Optimizing Team Performance Program can easily be adapted to guide cross-functional teams in optimal collaboration.