Strategic focus often involves saying no to intriguing project requests. 

One of the shortest words you can say is also the most important. Saying no is about choice. Shifting your mindset from “I have to” to “I choose to” requires saying no to tasks and activities that are off track.

There are many reasons why saying no is hard. You might not want to miss an opportunity. You might feel like you’re not being a team player. It may feel like you’re not getting to work on something fun and interesting. To achieve focus though, saying no is required. It can be hard to say no to someone’s idea or a group’s request of your team. When you say no, it feels like you’re not helping somebody out.

Try saying, “yes if,” instead. Essentially, what you’re doing is putting conditions around that yes. Those conditions can include things like, “You have to give me budget, you have to give me time, or you have to give me people to get this idea done.”

I had a boss who was full of ideas. He was always coming to me with new project requests. A lot of them were off strategy. They were distractions. I used to say no to all of them because to me it was clear that they weren’t strategic. After a few months, I started getting some negative feedback from him. He said, “All you do is say no, Mike. Nothing is ever positive with you.”

At that point, I shifted to the behavior of saying, “Yes if.” Whenever he came to me with a new project, I said, “That’s a really great idea. I’m happy to do it if you give me this much budget or this much time or if you give me that team member from that team to come work on the project.” A lot of times he would say, “Well no, I’m not giving you that budget or time or people.” And I said, “Well, then I can’t pursue the idea.”

Essentially, I was making him say no to the idea because it was clear that the idea wasn’t big enough or on-strategy enough to prioritize it properly. By getting the requester to focus, I was being positive and contributing to the team but also maintaining focus.

Saying no keeps your team members focused on their core responsibilities. When you do say no, you might have to back them up and say no for them. The point is, that short little word is the key to keeping your team focused on its strategic priorities.

Want to learn more about strategic focus for managers? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start learning about strategic focus. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!

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Keep your team performing well by quickly identifying and resolving conflicts.

Conflict is inherent in cross-functional team structures. Be vigilant about identifying and resolving conflict before it severely impacts team performance.

To identify conflict, monitor both project milestones as well as team member metrics. Talk with your team members frequently to suss out issues. If a milestone is missed, or a metric is off, get to the root cause quickly. When talking with your team members, ask them directly what conflict or issues they see. Don’t overreact to every little complaint but do look for trends. If everyone on the team is complaining about one individual’s behavior, you have an issue you need to resolve.

I was working as a consultant at one point, and the client had a cross-functional team. The team seemed to be working well, but we sensed a little bit of tension. We sat down with each individual client, and we asked what’s going well and what’s not. Every single one of those conversations involved one person’s name. They were a problem and there was a massive problem boiling underneath the surface. We sat down with that individual and we gave them very clear feedback. We also let them know what needed to change. By getting to that problem quickly and understanding what the conflict was, we were able to resolve it. The team worked much more effectively after that.

Team leaders need to resolve conflict both within the team and between the team and external stakeholders. External stakeholders often have resources the team needs or they have other priorities that team members need to work on. To resolve this type of conflict, go back to the project charter. Go to the conversations you had with that person’s manager or those external stakeholders about how much time and energy that person was going to put on your project. If you have a mismatch there, try and resolve the conflict quickly. Get your resources dedicated to your team and try and mitigate some of the concerns that that stakeholder has.

The more effectively you find what the conflict is, whether it’s internal to your team or with a stakeholder, the more effectively your team is going to function. Instead of focusing on conflict, your team can focus on the work.

Want to learn more about managing cross-functional teams? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start learning how to manage a cross-functional team. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!

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Effective communication is crucial when you’re leading a cross-functional team. Here are a few communication vehicles you can use.

A cross-functional team leader has a lot of communication vehicles at their disposal. These need to be used effectively. Here are some of the most common ones and a few suggestions on how you can use them.

Steering committee meetings

There are steering committee meetings. These are the most formal, and usually the least frequent. They involve senior stakeholders from multiple functions. You’ll provide a formal team progress update. You may conduct deep dives into specific areas of concern. Sometimes you’re coming to the steering committee for a major decision. These occur on a monthly, bimonthly, or even quarterly basis, depending on the size of the project.

Team project updates

There are team project updates. These are conducted with the entire cross-functional team. Every team member reviews their progress, shares concerns and needs for assistance, and team decisions are made here. These generally occur biweekly or monthly since they can be big and they’re very involved.

Regular team meetings

There are regular team meetings. Those involve the entire team, but they focus on specific upcoming deliverables or specific issues that need to be resolved. These are usually manage by exception types of meetings. They generally occur every week. Individual or subteam meetings involve a portion of the team. These occur on an as-needed basis. They focus on resolving a particular issue or making decisions that don’t affect the broader team or broader project.

Other communication vehicles

Other communication vehicles you can use to keep the team moving forward are project plans and update emails or calls. Keeping a project plan posted somewhere it’s accessible all the time enables team members and stakeholders to get a quick look at progress. They can see what the upcoming deliverables are. This can be posted either on a bulletin board or shared online. Update emails and calls can be sent to the broader team, or they can be used with specific team members. You can even target specific stakeholders to notify them of progress or issues. Make the update’s purpose clear up front. Is it just an FYI? Do you need a decision made? Is it a request for assistance?

All these means of communicating do take time and effort, but that’s the leader’s job on a cross-functional team. Make sure you invest the time keeping the team informed.

Want to learn more about managing cross-functional teams? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start learning how to manage a cross-functional team. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!

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Leading a cross-functional team involves learning what motivates each individual on your team.

Motivating a cross-functional team requires the leader to set goals that inspire people. They have to connect each team member’s work to the project’s success. They also have to understand people from different backgrounds.

Goals need to be ambitious but pragmatic. Consider setting a commit goal and a stretch goal where it’s appropriate. A commit goal is the basic expectation of what somebody’s going to deliver. A stretch goal is if everything goes right and we do all the right stuff, and we get a little bit lucky, here’s what we can achieve. People want to know their work matters. You have to make the linkage from their task to the broader project objectives.

One technique I love for doing this is sitting the team down in front of a whiteboard. We write down all the tasks they’re responsible for on the cross-functional team project. Then, we write the broad project objectives at the top of the board. We spend time linking every single task they’re working on to those broader goals for the project. Once they see that their work is really critical for driving this big project objective, all of a sudden their work is more meaningful.

Everyone on your team is an individual. They all have different things that are going to motivate them. For some people, it’s getting a great review. For other people, it’s about getting a great bonus. Still others just want recognition or they want to overcome a personal challenge. Some people on that cross-functional team see it as a great developmental opportunity to build a new skill. Sit down with each team member. Understand what motivates them. Do your best to connect project work to these motivators.

On one team I ran, we were replacing our phone system. I had somebody from telephony, operations, and project management on the team. The person from telephony was really excited about getting a new phone system. That’s what motivated them. They were tired of fixing the old system and having it break. This was an opportunity to get something cool and new for them to play with. The person from operations was excited about the project because it was a developmental opportunity for them. They normally worked the day-to-day operations. This was going to give them exposure to an area they knew nothing about. They’re working with technology and they thought that was pretty cool. The project manager on the team also saw this as a developmental opportunity. She had never worked on a big cross-functional team across a division. There was great visibility here for her and she was motivated by that.

When a cross-functional project has a crisis occur—and they will—the leader has to pull the team together and motivate them to overcome the challenge rather than playing the blame game and breaking the team apart. It’s easy to blame other people for failing to deliver. Once the blame game starts, the project is at risk and team dynamics can get very unhealthy after that. To resolve this, hold a fact-based review. Focus on what happened instead of saying whose fault it was. Understand why it happened. Look at the impact of the incident to time, cost, or quality for the project. Most importantly, sit down with the team and say, “What’s it going to take to fix this?” Casting blame doesn’t get you any closer to a solution. Instead, by focusing on the solution, you can reassign tasks, adjust deadlines, and change budgets accordingly.

On that same phone system project, we went live with one of our biggest locations. It didn’t work. We flipped switches and the phones didn’t come on. Instantly, everybody was saying, “Oh, it’s his fault. No, it’s her fault. No, it’s your fault.” Everybody was blaming each other. I said, “Team, we need to stop. Let’s understand why isn’t it working. Let’s understand what it’s going to take to get it working and then let’s look at who’s going to do what work to fix this issue.” By seeing that the blame game was starting and immediately cutting it off to get the team focused on moving forward, we were able to resolve the crisis pretty quickly.

The better you understand what motivates people and the more effectively you can avoid the blame game and manage crises, the better your cross-functional team will perform.

Want to learn more about managing cross-functional teams? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start learning how to manage a cross-functional team. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!

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Learn about the types of situations that call for a cross-functional team.

Cross-functional teams should be built when a project has a defined scope, the scope impacts multiple functional areas, and when the expertise required to successfully complete the project is not available only in the group leading the project. Scope determines which functions are or are not impacted. Without a clearly defined scope statement, it’s going to be hard to gather resources since people can claim they have higher priorities and their area isn’t in scope. With a well-defined scope, it becomes clear whether or not you need a cross-functional team. If the scope calls for skills your team lacks or requires working with other groups, you’re going to have to build a cross-functional team. It’s rare for a team to have all the support functions and perspectives it needs for every project it works on. Let’s take a look at a couple of examples.

I was working on a major technology replacement. This required technology changes. It had telephony impacts. This project was going to change our financial reporting. It would have impacts on our call center, on our associates and their workflows. It was going to change the associate desktops. It was going to fundamentally alter our operations. We needed a big cross-functional team in that situation.

I had another project where I ran a strategy and analysis team. We were going to make changes to the commissions we paid to some of our external agency partners. We own this function. We own the call center. We had the agency management function. The reporting was already built, so there would be no changes there. We didn’t have any technology changes we needed to make. We did not need a cross-functional team in that situation since we had all the resources we needed to make those changes.

The easiest way to determine if you need a cross-functional team or not is to ask if your team has all the resources and expertise required to carry out an initiative. If the answer’s no, you likely need to build a cross-functional team.

Want to learn more about managing cross-functional teams? How about taking an entire course on it? Go directly to the course and start learning how to manage a cross-functional team. The entire course is available at LinkedIn Learning. Enjoy!

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