GoKawiilOpinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Listen to this post
Key Takeaways Cross-functional team failures are almost always structural, not interpersonal. The organization’s design predicts the outcome more reliably than the quality of the people in the room. u003cbru003e
Incentive misalignment is the most common and least examined cause of cross-functional breakdown. When teams are measured in isolation, collaboration becomes optional. u003cbru003e
A single performance criterion based on joint success influences human behavior far more powerfully than anything else. u003cbru003e
Alignment among senior leaders is a must-have, not just a nice-to-have. When senior leaders play departmental games, the subordinate groups will inevitably follow suit. u003cbru003e
Prior to forming a cross-functional team, an audit of all the incentive systems, reporting relationships and success criteria associated with it should be conducted.
Two decades of building software teams will teach you a few hard lessons. The one that took me longest to fully accept is that when a cross-functional team stalls, the problem is almost never the people.
Microsoft learned this the hard way. It had been losing market to Apple and Google for almost ten years, not due to any lack of talent or ambition, but because of a management style called stack ranking. Stack ranking was a performance system that scored employees against each other, turning collaboration into something illogical. Suddenly, helping another team succeed started to feel like a liability, and over time, the most capable people in the building stopped working together. This was not out of hostility, but because the system made cooperation a career-killer.
Most organizations don’t use stack ranking. But I’ve watched the same dynamic play out in less obvious ways across dozens of teams. A product manager who won’t prioritize a request that doesn’t move her metrics. A department head who protects his budget in a planning meeting where everyone is supposed to be aligned. These are often entirely predictable outcomes of the organization’s design.
... continue reading