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Cross Functional Teams
A cross-functional team is a group of people with different functional expertise working toward a common goal.
Typically, it includes employees from all levels of an organization. Members may also come from outside an organization (in particular, from suppliers, key customers, or consultants). Cross-functional teams often function as self-directed teams assigned to a specific task which calls for the input and expertise of numerous departments.
Assigning a task to a team composed of multi-disciplinary individuals increases the level of creativity and out of the box thinking.
Each member offers an alternative perspective to the problem and potential solution to the task. In business today, innovation is a leading competitive advantage and cross-functional teams promote innovation through a creative collaboration process. Members of a cross-functional team must be well versed in multi-tasking as they are simultaneously responsible for their cross-functional team duties as well as their normal day-to-day work tasks.
Common Goal
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Better for the team, better for the individual
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improve coordination and integration
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work across organizational boundaries
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improve the efficiency of the team by increasing productivity
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Achieve customer satisfaction by working toward the same goal
Some researchers have viewed cross-functional interactions as cooperative or competitive in nature, while others have argued that organization’s functional areas are often forced to compete and cooperate simultaneously with one another (“coopetition”) and it is critical to understand how these complex relationships interplay and affect firm performance.
Cross Functional Team Skill Composition
One common challenge of composing Cross-Functional Teams is the thought that every technical member on the team is required to have all the technical skills necessary to perform any of the work. It helps that team members can perform more than one technical skill but it is still okay to have specialists. It is just best when not all members of the team are specialists.