My Thoughts

Why Cross Functional Skills Are Your Competitive Advantage , and How to Build Them

If you believe collaboration is about scheduling another meeting, you're already late. Seriously. There's no functional reason for it , they should all be working together , but these are tribal prejudices grabbing hold of a Business to make sure things keep the same. Groups at organisations in Sydney, Melbourne and beyond tell me the stories are largely the same: projects slow down; expenses blow out; morale sags not because people aren't technically capable, but simply because they don't know how to work across invisible lines marking their particular function line within an Organisation.

Cross functional skills aren't soft fluff. They're the operational grease that makes strategy go. Why bother? Because the contemporary business problem is not a single discipline one. Finance needs product and so on: Product never design alone. Sales is looking for a marketer. Ops wants IT. IT badly needs data. When those teams don't communicate well, you end up with sub optimal tradeoffs, duplicated effort and projects that never scale. When they do talk? You do occasionally get perfectly smashing results.

Let me be blunt: Hierarchy is highly overrated in most cases. Move aside, please. And , get this , a lot of annual performance reviews are little more than theatre. Both of these truths are going to make people uncomfortable. Good. Discomfort is where growth hides.

What cross functional <a href="https://paramounttraining.com.au/training/collaboration-training/">collaboration</a> really looks like

A cross functional team is not a one time endeavour or "task force". It's a brief micro organisation cobbled together for the purpose of solving a problem: software launch, customer retention drive, supply chain redesign. It is generally made up of product, marketing, sales, finance and operations people. Sometimes legal and HR too. And the magic is that members know enough about each others' drivers to make trade offs in a hurry. Not ignorance , respect. Respect and a shared language.

The upside is measurable. CEOs always tie improved cross org collaboration to faster decision cycles, positive innovation and less process rework. According to a Deloitte human capital study, some 83% of executives said collaboration in the workplace is important for innovation and growth. That's a great deal of organisational will; the challenge is turning that will into reality. (See Sources & Notes.)

Common barriers , and the brutal truth

Siloed goals. KPIs which incentivise close victories undermine shared results.

Mismatched communication. They use different metrics, jargon, even time horizons.
Power plays. The result is no mystery: When one team treats another as if they were a vendor, you know what happens.
Unclear decision rights. Who signs off? Who is accountable? If that is fuzzy, you are going to get paralysis.

Organisations typically throw technology at those problems. Collaboration platforms, dashboards, fancy wikis. Technology's good for that, but it won't fix the human dynamics at play underneath. Perfectly set up tools that did nothing because people were still arguing about priorities in the wrong channel.

Core skills to develop

Start with <a href="https://paramounttraining.com.au/training/communication-training/">communication</a> , the obvious one , but not only that.

Inspire some lively give and take. Active listening and empathy. Not just nodding. True listening involves paraphrasing the other person's constraints and confirming understanding. Try it in your next meeting. People are watching.
Clear, compelling messaging. Cross functional work requires translators , people who can translate the technical specs into business impact and vice versa.
Negotiation for mutual gain. Learn to say what would make this acceptable to you? to ask "what can I do?" rather than "what would you like me to do?" Strive for solutions where everyone retains dignity and purpose.
Conflict Resolution. Conflict is inevitable. Quick, well defined resolution is better than slow grudges. Apply root cause logic, not score settling.
Stakeholder mapping. Understand who will be impacted and why. Also think of your invisible stakeholders and bring them on board early as possible.
Facilitation skills. Leading a productive meeting with lots of participation is an art. Keep it simple: round robin input, silent 10 minutes of ideation, agreed parking lots for side issues.

Here is a simple checklist I enforce teams use to communicate:

Describe the decision we're aiming for.
Explain the constraints (time, budget, dependencies).
Give two examples if...

Non verbal and cultural differences

Do not discount body language , particularly with the face to face workshop. Open posture and eye contact also support taking chances. In hybrid or virtual critiquing, watch turn taking and camera etiquette (or dominant voices will fill the void).

Be culturally literate. A throwaway line that strikes a chord in Brisbane could fall flat in Perth. The little things count: Scheduling norms, formality, acceptable directness. I have seen a workshop stall because a local team took direct criticism as public shaming. Which could have easily been prevented with a pre session alignment.

Converting conflict to fuel

Conflict is not the enemy. Handled well, it's the root of creativity. It's all about the trick of people from problems and interests from positions , classic principled negotiation. When two functions are at odds, ask "what's the underlying risk you're trying to avert?" Once interests are revealed, you can engineer trade offs.

If there are power imbalances, call on a neutral facilitator. A brief, focused meditation occasionally saves many months of rework.

Practical structures based on what works

You don't need a radical new org chart. Small procedural changes can often lead to big gains.

Metrics have been shared with journalists. Choose one or two KPIs that are important to both teams. When your marketing and product teams both measure "time to value" for users life gets easier.
Battle rhythm alignment. Harmonise planning cadences , weekly standups, monthly steering, quarterly strategy , such that dependencies are visible.
Role clarity. Define who's accountable (R), responsible (A), consulted (C) and informed (I) , yes, RACI still works if used wisely
Rotations and shadowing. Ever shorter rotations (one week, even) can foster empathy. When finance tags along product for a sprint, proposals are more polished and approvals come faster.
Small pilots. De risk and depoliticise by establishing value in a sandbox. Success sells. Slow failure is the killer.

Leadership's job , less heroics, more scaffolding

Leaders can't just do collaboration for you. Their role is to design the environment, the incentives, the governance, to ensure the psychological safety. That includes:

Aligning performance criteria to cross functional outcomes;
Being a role model of vulnerability , say I don't know;
Providing resources for facilitation and training;
Removing blockers fast.

Yes, leaders should also stop fabricating that every decision is their own. Delegation and clear guardrails trump micromanagement.

Measurement: how to know you're getting better

Measure process and outcome. Don't just measure if a project was delivered on time; measure how teams felt about the process. Valuable metrics:

Idea to delivery cycle time with quantified taxonomies for quality
In addition, the CED provides an opportunity to quantify the value that cross functional teams receive from their work together.
Rework rate included in both time and cost as separate measures.
The team satisfaction difference of top 20% and bottom 20%.
Percentage of initiatives with shared KPIs between functions.

One pro tip: Keep a short post mortem after every cross functional initiative and write down three things , what worked, what didn't, what's next to try. Short, sharp, actionable.

Training that lasts

Training needs to make sense in context. Boilerplate "teamwork" workshops rarely do the trick. Instead:

Use real work in the room , send teams back to solve current problems during training.
Mix short theory with immediate practice and follow up coaching.
Develop facilitators , most organisations don't have skilled ones, and they pay the price for it.
Reinforce learning via manager coaching and performance conversations.

We deliver deliberately workshop driven programmes and coaching cycles. Why? Because people forget. Reinforcement matters.

Technology , useful but not good enough

Tools like Slack, Miro and Jira help visibility. But they can foster assumptions: "If it's on the board, we share this alignment." No , tools are to support the human work, not replace it. Utilise tech to illuminate dependencies, and status; registry human conversations to work out trade offs.

Two upbeat but controversial views

Performance reviews should be shorter and more frequent. The yearly verdicts make politics and inhibit cross functional risk taking. More constructive are quarterly, no nonsense conversations.
Titles matter less than ability zones. Recruit for adaptability and cross functional impact, not restrictive titles.

Some will disagree. That's fine. It is intended to stimulate helpful change.

Non specific real world examples

ITC I saw a retailer in Melbourne completely flip the script on their product launch by bringing marketing, operations and merchandising together around one "first 30 day retention" metric. Once both finance and product held the identical number, it was no longer an exercise in vetoing decisions.

At the further end, a software vendor from Perth lost months when they shipped product without operations' buy in; customers couldn't on board. The lesson? Bring operations in early.

When trust is shattered, can it be restored?

Trust is delicate but also fixable. When trust breaks down:

Publicly acknowledge it (respectably), of course.
Determine what the chain of events was , who promised what, why did it fell apart?
Agree on replicable steps that could prevent a repeat performance.
Monitor those steps publicly.

Radical change is the fastest route to healing. Promises are cheap; actions matter.

Final note , and an open thought

Cross functional skills are a discipline, not a checkbox. They take attention, patience and , frankly , leadership discipline. Too many organisations are looking for the cow without investing in the messy days to days of bringing it to life. We're seeing the consequences of doing the work , and not doing it , everywhere in Australia.

If serious, start small, measure, iterate. Build translators. Teach negotiation. Reward shared wins. And recall: good talk is not synonymous with shared outcomes. Words are cheap. Outcomes are not.

Sources & Notes

Deloitte Insights. Global Human Capital Trends 2020: "The power of teams and networks for innovation is becoming increasingly important to organisations and executives." Deloitte, 2020.

Project Management Institute (PMI). Pulse of the Profession: project challenges and failures due to poor communication. PMI, various years.