Cross functional teams are groups consisting of people from different functional areas of the company – for example, marketing, product, sales, and customer success. These can be working groups, where each member belongs to their functional team as well as the cross functional team, or they can be the primary structure of your organization.
As a coach, I’ve encountered a great deal of confusion when talking to teams about building a cross-functional team. Often, as soon as I mention the notion, the reaction is negative. People often seem to think of cross functional behavior as every person on the team being able to do every job on the team.
The impression that they get is that they are being told specialization is bad, and generalization is good. I believe this is often exactly what some Agile advocates are thinking when they talk about cross functional teams, but I want to paint a different picture.
I mean, generalization overall is a good thing. But we still need specialists. We are looking for the right mix of people with the right skills – not one person with all the skills. Everyone can’t and won’t be equally good at everything.
Cross functional teams help organizations put their customers first, by encouraging effective communication across teams. Bringing people together with different perspectives can improve problem solving and lead to smarter, more sustainable decision making. Instead of competing for resources, cross functional teams collaborate to optimize use of time, money, and effort to improve customer satisfaction while helping to meet organizational goals.
Cross functional teams are growing in popularity because of an increased demand from customers to provide consistently personalized, high-touch customer experience. Some of the benefits of cross functional teams include improved coordination across functional areas, increased innovation in product and process, and reduced cycle times for key customer touchpoints.
