Cross Influential: The Cheaper and Faster Cross Functional.
I was once given a task to research what it would take to make my large organization, with many departments working in silos, work more cross functionally. I can sense your eye roll and sigh of exhaustion.
What I realized in the mountains of articles and research about cross-functionality is that it takes a lot of time, a lot of resources, and hardest of all, a complete shift in organizational mindsets. Cross functionality requires a mission-focused mindset rather than a departmental goals focused mindset. A hard shift to make when pay raises and bonuses are built on departmental goals.
The goal of cross-functionality is to make something bigger than the sum of its parts. That’s a goal nearly every organization wants to achieve, but often ends in people feeling like they are slowly dying in monotonous report out meetings. In the years following my research we’ve wondered, how can we get the benefits of cross-functionality, while avoiding some of the pain.
Recently, we started reimagining cross-functional into an alternative: cross-influential.
Cross-influence means having the opportunity to provide input and advice at important points in time while not owning every decision collectively or having on-going cross-functional meetings without specific goals.
The following are THREE STEPS to get on the path to cross influence:
Step One: Set shared, mission focused, goals with shared measures of success.
Setting departmental goals around achieving the mission that aren’t diametrically opposed to one another goes a long way in easing the cross functional burden. For example, health care organizations faced this dilemma for the last decade. Should they optimize for serving (and billing) more people who are sick, or optimize for helping people to stay well? We know the answer is keeping people well and out of health care systems. While many health care systems are in the midst of the transition, they have found it deeply challenging because the momentum of the organization spins the other direction.
What does cross-influence look like?
Bring departments together on the front end of a plan to define the measures that will indicate you are achieving your mission together. Don’t pit departments against each other with goals that are in conflict, but define goals and measures that compliment each other and present a balanced approach. This will save you the time and cultural decay caused by cross-functional in-fighting. It will also help you communicate your progress more clearly to all stakeholders.
Step Two: Be clear on who makes decisions.
What people don’t want is for someone without expertise making decisions on how their own work moves forward. For example, people on the front lines of an issue serving communities don’t want fundraisers making choices for how communities are served, and fundraisers don’t want front-line workers telling them how to handle the direct mail campaign. Both would be an ineffective and inefficient use of staff time, but can be a result of cross functional team design.
What does cross-influence look like?
A front line worker can help influence an authentic, respectful narrative, while the fundraising team uses their expertise to know the best placement of the information. This does not require a standing cross functional committee, but can be done in a short-term and focused effort of cross influence. See this previous blog for more information on how to clarify decision making roles.
“Cross-influence means having the opportunity to provide input and advice at important points in time while not owning every decision collectively or having on-going cross-functional meetings without specific goals. ”
Step Three: Share information faster and in a different way.
With shared goals and measures set and decision making understood, the last step to get started with cross-influence is transparency of information.
At the core of most calls for cross-functionality is people wanting to know what is going on across their organization, how it impacts their work, and how they can influence other parts of the organization to achieve their goals.
What does cross-influence look like?
Keep a dashboard of the shared goals and measures updated as frequently as possible, and accessible to all staff. Drop most of the cross-functional meetings that are spent on report outs. Provide virtual spaces to share information on upcoming initiatives, and save the effort of bringing teams together across functions for moments when the choices being made will have an impact on other departments or the shared goals and measures of the organization. That is the time to allow and encourage cross-influence.
At See What I Mean, we have worked with many organizations with siloed teams or departments. It is nearly impossible to avoid as your organization grows to achieve its mission. Through that work, we have understood ways to create internal communications that can drive collaboration and engagement, and influence the organization to move forward together. If you would like to discuss what this looks like in your organization, schedule a discovery session today.