John Jarosz is a partner and co-founder at Peephole where he oversees experience design, brand collaboration and experience strategy.
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While most of us involved in product design and delivery would agree that innovation is complex, we all have different reasons why it is so difficult. My theory? Successful innovation involves cross-functional teams – and yet cross-functional teams are notorious for different goals.
In his article for Harvard Business Review, Behnam Tabrizi offers his insights into why so many cross-functional teams are struggling. First, it can be difficult to argue, let alone lead and create processes for teams that don’t share success metrics. Then there’s the politics of which team is “in charge” and the ensuing irritations and pointing the finger this can cause.
In my experience, identifying dysfunction within cross-functional teams is nowhere as clear as on your roadmap. If progress on your roadmap is consistently lagging, incomplete, or blocked, your team is also blocked.
Here’s how to consistently navigate roadblocks in your roadmap:
Designate a decision maker.
A critical cause of team dysfunction is the need for greater accountability. Teams that are not used to working together often compete within their departments and shut down to focus only on their “parts” of the project, which does not bode well for transformative innovation.
So I suggest you start by identifying and acknowledging an active team member as the leader of the overall initiative. This person should have team and program management experience while still having the context to dive deep into the work and understand how to contextualize that for stakeholders.
If your innovation activity is project-based, leadership candidates can come from any cross-functional team, as long as they have the experience and credibility to move the project forward. But if your innovation initiative is long-term or continuous, that person should be a product or engineering leader, or even better, a jointly responsible couple representing both product and development.
When current leaders are struggling, or if it would ruffle too many feathers to have someone from one team oversee another, designate an executive sponsor as the leader. Typically, teams will respond well to a higher level of leadership involvement, regardless of the department they represent. In these cases, the executive sponsor should act more like the final decision maker and serve as an escalation point for cross-functional teams struggling to learn how to work together.
Define quality and how to measure it.
Everyone finds it motivating to see movement on a roadmap and to receive reports that show that an innovation project is on time. We all like checking boxes. But seeing a project as ‘finished’ when the quality is not there ultimately leads to derailment and derailment. Therefore, product innovation should never be judged on roadmaps alone. If user feedback, production testing, and field testing reveal a quality issue, it’s probably because the team isn’t sure what “quality” means.
As silly as it may sound to have to define quality, it is often subjective and measured differently between cross-functional groups. For some it means no bugs. For others, it’s a seamless flow of experience. Others may see quality as “something to figure out later.” It is critical to have a shared and consistent definition of quality to which the whole project group can contribute and measure themselves. And it is quite possible and rightly so that what quality means for one specific innovation project differs from other projects and routine activities.
When working with clients, I encourage them to use examples and documentation. This way each department can reflect what quality looks like to them and everyone can be on the same wavelength.
Meet less, do more.
Cross-functional teams are particularly guilty of having too many information meetings and not giving enough time to get the work done on the project. And it makes sense, as there are many more invested groups, experts, and support teams that need status updates. But make sure the reporting doesn’t become more “urgent” than the actual production effort.
Team leaders should see their role as protecting production efforts so no one gets burned out trying to attend everyone’s meetings. Set expectations by making short updates a habit through automated reporting tools. If teams struggle to keep track of information, change the process so you don’t sacrifice production focus.
If you hear mixed messages during updates, or if you notice large fluctuations in information being presented between one group and another, it could be a sign that certain groups within a cross-functional team are struggling. If so, deploying smaller but more frequent updates will take less time for teams to prepare and can help mitigate those “big scary presentations” that can stress teams or distract them for weeks. Ultimately, these smaller updates can alleviate significant periods of production loss.
Encouraging teams to conduct “retrospectives” allows groups or individuals within a cross-functional team to share the challenges and ideas they have to make collaboration better and improve their processes. By providing an outlet for people working together, some perhaps for the first time, they are more likely to find the methods and answers as a larger team to address their shortcomings.
Cross-functional teams are a very effective way to bring innovation to market quickly. But the impact of a false start can derail. Watch your roadmap for signals to make sure your team is on the same page and your project arrives at its destination smoothly.
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