There is no doubt about the fact that cross-functional team collaboration is extremely effective and productive, but what are those advantages that make it so? Why do some of the world’s biggest companies such as Google, Amazon, and Facebook actively use cross functionality to boost their productivity and speed? Discussing some of the key elements involved here helps us to understand the advantages of having a cross-functional team, even though it can be tough to manage effectively.
Cross-Functionality Inspires Creativity and Innovation
Creativity in a business setting is facilitated greatly when a bunch of inventive minds from various sectors of expertise come together to give form to the same objective. The different perspective will, without a doubt, be able to provide new insights and further build on those insights collectively to create and materialize fascinating concepts. In order to maximize on this aspect of cross-functional productivity, Menttium both provides and accepts cross functionally productive teams of experts and mentors with years of experience in their respective areas of expertise because the more experience the individuals bring to such a team, the more productive, efficient, and innovative it becomes. Diversity in the input is necessary to bring innovation, and that’s precisely what a cross-functionally effective team is all about.
It Bridges Knowledge and Communication Gaps
Any project that can benefit from cross-functional teams definitely has multiple facets to it, and it is unfair to expect one or two experts to understand everything about the project in all the necessary details. To have a team that has diverse knowledge and experience means that the team members can bridge each other’s knowledge gaps and make it easier to communicate to each other, regarding the problems they are facing or can put that collective knowledge to use. The knowledge and experience pool also makes it easier to get new insights onto tough problems and bottlenecks, which may lead to either new solutions altogether or better solutions to old problems.
Wouldn’t It Be Tough to Manage a Cross-Functional Team?
Managing a cross-functional team can be challenging, especially if the individuals have not worked with each other before. However, services like Menttium have made it much easier, as they have their own proven matching system in order for both individuals and businesses to find the right team of mentors and/or experts for their specific needs. It just makes the work of your project manager so much easier and less time is wasted in orientation.
To conclude, it can be said that having a cross-functional team is definitely beneficial because it brings innovation, creativity, knowledge, information, communication, productivity, speed, and much more to a project, which ultimately, is almost assured to produce excellent end results. Management of a cross-functional team consisting of experts from various areas can be an issue at times of course. However, with modern services offering better matches that are not only decided by skills required for the job but also emotional intelligence and compatibility, dysfunctionality really isn’t as much of a problem anymore either.
