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Cross-functional collaboration: benefits, challenges and tips

date: 18 July 2024
reading time: 11 min

In the past, it was once common to experience a company culture where there was little to no interaction across departments. Over time, the organizational structure has slowly shifted towards promoting cross functional collaboration.

This is when difficult departments have engaged employees collaborate with each other to brainstorm creative solutions for the higher ups. This functional collaboration eventually evolved into the present day’s cross functional collaboration.


Key takeaways on a cross-functional collaboration:

  • Cross-functional collaboration involves bringing together team members from different departments to work on a specific project, enhancing communication and fostering innovative solutions by leveraging diverse perspectives and expertise.
  • One of the primary benefits of cross-functional teams is increased employee engagement, as working with peers from various departments helps combat feelings of isolation and promotes a sense of belonging, leading to improved job satisfaction and teamwork.
  • To overcome common challenges such as lack of trust and poor communication, it is essential for leaders to establish clear collaboration plans, select appropriate tools, and create an open environment that encourages constructive feedback and embraces diverse perspectives from all team members.


What is cross-functional collaboration?

Cross functional collaboration is when different members from different departments come together and work on a project together. Cross functional projects are often composed by following a common project governance structure. Governance structure is considered to be the framework that provides guidelines on how to structure a project.

Teams are often made up of members from various departments to collaborate on a specific project.

For example, a cross functional team can include a member of the marketing department, R&D department, customer service department, and product management department. This team will be assigned a leader in many cases and now they have to work together to complete the project.

Functional teams vs cross-functional teams
Functional teams vs cross-functional teams

Traditionally, the role of a team leader involves managing a small team and organising tasks for team members. The responsibilities of team leaders in software companies varies depending on the company culture.

Leaders are often in charge of delivering clear standards and expectations to the rest of the group to ensure everyone stays on the same page. Keeping the entire team on the same page includes giving constant reminders about the team’s goals, and encouraging a collaborative mindset where members can work together to make progress on their tasks.

Project management can apply either scrum or agile methodology during projects. Agile differs from Scrum as there is more flexibility and prioritises team collaboration.

Agile Development Methodology
Agile Development Methodology

Scrum is a framework of agile that works for the satisfaction of the client. There are designated roles such as Product Owner, Scrum Master, Team Leader, and Development Team. Each of these roles work in short “sprint” cycles, where specific tasks are laid out to be completed within the “sprint”.

However, there are claims of dysfunctions of a team in Scrum that have been reviewed by author Patrick Lencioni in his book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.

Companies strive to have high levels of cross functional collaboration because a collaborative culture has shown to inspire innovative ideas, and influence communication across departments. In a 2024 survey done by Deloitte, 54% of executives who were interviewed claim that cross functional collaboration is often occurring or always occurring at the worker level.

Find out more about agile management methods:


Main benefits of cross-functional team collaboration

Cross-functional collaboration has shown to bring many benefits to companies that implement this kind of organisational culture. Benefits range from positively affecting individual employees, to the organisation overall.


Increased employee engagement

Staying in one department over time with peers that do similar tasks over time lowers employee engagement. As one loses engagement with their peers, they begin to lose their sense of belonging and begin to feel isolated from their coworkers.

Bringing employees onto a cross functional team helps improve employee engagement. As each member represents their respective department, they get to engage with peers from different departments who have different thought process.

This leads to an increase in teamwork, job satisfaction, and overall boost employee engagement.


Streamlining decision-making processes

The traditional method of decision-making was having a project slowly pass from one department to another department, costing the company time. By creating cross functional teams, team members act as a representative for their respective departments.

As each cross functional team gets their own project, all decision-making processes are decided within the team. Members who already been part of other teams can also share their insights about previous successful projects to help the team succeed with the current project.


Encouraging a culture of continuous learning

As cross functional collaboration involves working with peers from other departments, members get to learn how others do their job through knowledge sharing.

As the only expert from their field, team members have to refrain from using jargon and explain their thought processes to the rest of the team so they understand their opinions. Learning from members of other departments also helps develop special skill sets for those involved in the team.

Cross functional teamwork promotes members from different departments to learn different forms of problem solving and conflict resolution from each other, improving their management skills.

Cross-functional collaboration - management skills
Cross-functional collaboration – management skills


Utilising each team member’s unique strengths

Having a diverse group work cross functionally together brings many benefits. As each member comes from diverse backgrounds, as their different strengths bring creativity. Members engaging with each others’ different skillsets bring forth innovative solutions that are realistic to implement.

For example, as a team, members come up with a solution that requires creating a new digital platform. The member whose main job is software development is able to communicate with the rest of the team whether the proposed solution is feasible to develop.

Also, having teams composed of people from different backgrounds helps avoid issues such as groupthink. Groupthink happens when a group agrees on a decision even when there are some members who internally have other opinions but doesn’t voice them to promote group unity.

People within the same department are more likely to experience groupthink as they believe to share same similar thoughts with their peers, making it difficult to voice a different opinion.

However, in a cross functional team where diversity in people and opinions is encouraged, it is easier to avoid groupthink.


Promotes innovative ideas

Cross functional teams feed off of each others’ ideas, leading to the development of many creative solutions. As a collaborative team continues to work together, members eventually will bond with each other and gain trust in their teammates abilities.

Then when a member comes up with an innovative idea, instead of turning it down; members will collaborate with the idea by adding their own thoughts, eventually creating an innovative solution to their project.

Find out how innovative ideas can be used in different industries:


Common challenges of cross-functional collaboration

Cross functional collaboration, as all approaches to change company culture, it is bound to encounter challenges. The types of challenges vary based on where in the company is the challenge being faced with. Unlike the benefits of cross functional collaboration, challenges can be faced by solely by the team.


Lack of trust between team members

When members are initially assigned to a cross functional team, oftentimes it will be the first time where they meet their teammates. Since no one knows anything about each other, members are hesitant to immediately trust each other.

Over time, members will naturally open up and begin to trust their other members. However, waiting for things to happen naturally can have a negative impact on the team. Instead, it is important for the leader of the team to set up team bonding exercises to help get rid of negative feelings about the other members.

It is also important to constantly remind the team that every has the same objectives that they are trying to achieve and that the team’s progress can advance at a quicker rate if the members trusted each other and engage in team collaboration.


Siloed teams

It is common that different departments hide information from the rest of company, leaving those in the dark to develop their own data, creating silos in the process. Oftentimes, silos go unnoticed by people within the same department, only to become prevalent with cross team collaboration.

To prevent silos from disrupting the workflow of the team, it is important for members to remember that functional collaboration includes sharing data with the other members. This way everyone stays on the same page regarding data.


Remote team members

When team members are unable to participate in-person, it becomes more difficult to remain engaged in the group process. Cross team collaboration is very valuable when it comes to creating solutions and it is important that all members participate.

Digital collaboration tools has made collaboration efforts easier especially for remote teams or remote members, having access to everything via collaboration tools makes it easier to include those who are remote into discussions. These tools also makes it easier for project leaders to manage their remote workers.

Multinational corporations have cross functional teams where there are members who participate remotely as their office is located abroad. Then leaders and project managers would have to ensure that the member continues to remain engaged with the work and continue to collaborate with the other members.

Leaders can also motivate workers remotely by constantly reminding them that they are part of the team and creating virtual hangout sessions.


Poor communication among team members

Different departments often use different communication styles which can lead to poor communication within the team.

To prevent this from negatively affecting the team’s work, it is vital to establish a form of communication before beginning the project. It can be as simple as contacting everyone via a group chat on a communication platform.


Best practices for effective cross-functional collaboration

Cross functional collaboration looks different for everyone. It varies due to the members and the assignments given to them.

However, these practices are useful for all kinds of functional collaboration as they help ensure effectiveness across the team.


Select a strong leader for the team

Team leaders are the guides of the cross functional teams that helps them see the bigger picture. Along with leadership skills, leaders should be able to have hard skills similar to project managers such as the ability to identify stakeholders, threats, opportunities.

Above all else, they should also be able to understand how their team members work. Understanding how each team member engages in team collaboration and be able to effectively lead them towards the team’s goals is very valuable.


Make a collaboration plan and set clear goals

Making a collaboration plan sets the standard for the group about how the team will collaborate with each other. It also sets expectations of the results the collaborative team brings to project leaders.


Select the right collaborative tools and technology

Using the right project management tools for your team can help improve cross functional collaboration. The right tools should be easily understood by each team member,


Embrace flexibility and various perspectives in cross-functional teams

Cross functional teams are composed of people who are very diverse from one another. Therefore, it is impossible to expect the same perspective to be given when engaging in team collaboration.

By embracing various perspectives from early on in the planning process, cross functional collaboration becomes more engaging as members are allowed to express their ideas without being judged by others. Having the ability to freely engage with each other also increases creativity and innovation.


Be open to discussing constructive feedback

Everyone has gotten constructive feedback before in their lives as no one is born perfect. Being open to discuss constructive feedback allows the group to break down their previous plan and figure out what went wrong and what needs to be changed in order to improve it.


Enhance your organisation’s cross-functional collaboration with Future Processing

Cross functional collaboration in the modern day requires many digital tools to help improve the team’s efficiency. Future Processing offers IT consulting services to companies to help them with Product Strategy and other solutions related to Digital Product Services.

A company improving its digital capabilities will help cross functional teams achieve solutions at a faster rate as new software helps with many aspects such as research and development and data solutions.

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