• Home
• About Terri
• CanChange
• Performance Change Initiatives

Lead Cross-Functional Teams

My thoughts about today’s entry - Leading Cross-Functional Teams - brought me back to my days at Babson College.  Two things came to mind:  group work and the case method of teaching.  Now this isn’t an advertisement for Babson but the MBA program there is excellent.

Group work is a big component of the program.  At least twice a semester I was thrown together with 5-6 other students to design, develop and deliver a major presentation or paper for a class.  Each group had a mix of genders, nationalities (35% of the class was international) and backgrounds.  Additionally, because all of us were students, there was no designated “boss” or leader.  We were all equally responsible for the outcome.  This created quite a bit of tension because the entire group received the same grade regardless of each members contributions.

Does this kind of situation sound familiar?  I would bet it does and I know from experience both at Babson and with my clients that it isn’t easy.  The amount of effort expended to keep the team working can actually exceed the effort put into delivering the work!  I have found that simply the recognition that a team like this requires work in and of itself helps my clients work more effectively.

The second thought I had about Babson has to do with the case study method for teaching.  Popularized by Harvard, it is common in most MBA programs.  Babson has a unique take on it through their team teaching model.  At Babson, at group of professors with expertise in different disciplines - accounting/finance, marketing, operations, organizational design - teach one case from multiple viewpoints.  It was not uncommon for the class to start down a path towards a solution - a marketing plan, for example - only to see that solution blow up when viewed through a financial lens.

This is what happens when cross-fuctional teams work together.  It becomes easy to sit in a “functional silo” offering opinions and criticisms without regard to the perspective of others.  One of the keys to getting a cross-functional team to operate smoothly is to break down these silos and to get everyone focused on the goal of the overall team.

Thanks for sticking with my stories about Babson.  This presentation on Leading Cross-Functional Teams is a short summary of some actions and tips that you can take to help your cross-functional teams run more smoothly.  Enjoy.

Lead Cross-Functional Teams: Advice & Tips

Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader.