Cross-functional

(upbeat music) - If you work for a large organization then you might run into the challenge of communicating in a cross-functional team. A cross-functional team is a group of employees from different functional areas working together to deliver a common product. The big challenge with cross-functional teams is that people underestimate the shared language and concepts that are part of each functional area. The key way to overcome this challenge is to make sure that you're doing a lot of cross training between the team members and different functional areas. - Have you ever walked away from a meeting with some technical workers and thought to yourself, what the heck was that all about? Well I know I have. There is a perception that communicating with technical people can be difficult. There are some factual realities to this. First of all, your tech teams talk amongst themselves about the stuff that they're working on, so of course, there will be language that they use which is specific to the topic. There's also the matter of communication styles and preferences. But when you're starting to build relationships with people, it's really important to speak to them in ways that make them comfortable. - One of my clients is a German based international company. The German project team members would habitually send their email requests and instructions in their native language to non German speakers. An email can be easily copy pasted into a translation program, which is precisely what the American and Mexican team members were doing. The problem is that the translations did not cover the precise intent of the original email request, and the tasks performed were wrong, which triggered delays and rework that ultimately caused a late delivery to the customer. What prevented this from happening again? Establishing a basic agreement on the use of the common language can help drive home the idea that with agreements, we can better guarantee the success of our project. - It would seem obvious that you want the best people on your project and on all of the projects in your program. But there are a few things to consider before you start. First, you need to find out who your existing resources are. How many you have of each type. And therefor, how many additional resources that you need. Then there are the criteria for selecting the ideal person. Clearly there's technical knowledge and skills. If you have access to this information, there is personality. Is the person easy to work with? And will they fit with your team's culture and mix? You might be looking for someone creative, or good at detail, or hard driving, or caring, or who stands back and checks things, depending on whatever gaps you have in your current team. - Brainstorming is a simple exercise that makes it almost easy for even the most rigid team to experience the power of creative thinking. Brainstorming is such a powerful tool because it taps into the knowledge and experience of the entire team. Because brainstorming gets people engaged and invested in ideas, it encourages teamwork, and it can often help a team find innovative new paths on their journey to project success.