Leading cross-functional teams - Tobias Freudenreich on The Product Experience
Sep 6, 2023
auto_awesome
Tobias Freudenreich, a product leadership coach and consultant, joins the podcast to discuss the structure and benefits of cross-functional teams in building innovative products. Topics include collaboration, leadership, communication, and alignment within teams, as well as the importance of strategy and effective communication.
Cross-functional teams bring together diverse perspectives and expertise for driving innovation.
Leadership teams need to evolve and adopt a cross-functional leadership style to avoid conflicts and misalignment within cross-functional teams.
Deep dives
The Importance of Cross-Functional Leadership Teams
Cross-functional leadership teams are essential in building successful tech products. These teams consist of individuals from different disciplines, such as product management, engineering, and UX. The goal of cross-functional teams is to bring together diverse perspectives and expertise to drive innovation. However, many organizations struggle with properly leading these teams. The traditional leadership style focused on functional silos does not work effectively for cross-functional teams. To succeed, organizations need to embrace cross-functional leadership teams that collaborate on eye level. This requires aligning leaders from different departments and working towards a shared product strategy. Clarity of direction and alignment are crucial for these teams, and leadership teams should speak with one voice to provide guidance and reduce complexity.
Challenges of Leading Cross-Functional Teams
Leading cross-functional teams comes with its challenges. Often, organizations adopt cross-functional teams without properly addressing the changes required in leadership style. Many leadership teams continue to operate as if they are leading functional teams, resulting in conflicts between different departments within cross-functional teams. To overcome this, leadership teams need to evolve and adopt a cross-functional leadership style. Siloed artifacts like separate product, UX, and tech strategies should be replaced with a unified product strategy that incorporates different perspectives. This will enable cross-functional teams to work collaboratively and avoid confusion and misalignment. Disagree and commit becomes essential, and conflicts and disagreements should be clarified and resolved at the leadership level, providing a clear direction to the cross-functional teams.
Building Alignment and Collaboration
Achieving alignment and collaboration within cross-functional leadership teams requires intentional effort and communication. Leaders should spend time together and have regular discussions to ensure they are closely aligned. This includes meetings where leaders from different departments come together to work on strategy and resolve conflicts. The aim is to reduce complexity and provide a shared story and direction. The communication should extend beyond the leadership team, with heads of departments engaging in regular conversations to ensure alignment across the organization. The ultimate goal is to create a culture of transparency and collaboration, where leaders speak with one voice and everyone understands the direction and goals of the organization.
In this week's podcast, we were joined by Tobias Freudenreich, a product leadership coach and consultant based in Hamburg. This episode dives deep into the structure of cross-functional teams and explains how this structure can help us build great products that people love.
Featured Links: Follow Tobias on LinkedIn and his website | Tobias' 'Introducing Cross-Functional Leadership'blog post | Tobias' 'Product Leadership'talk at ProductTank Berlin | Martin Eriksson's 'The Decision Stack'framework | 'Getting Started With Outcomes'post by Josh Seiden
Our Hosts Lily Smith enjoys working as a consultant product manager with early-stage and growing startups and as a mentor to other product managers. She’s currently Chief Product Officer at BBC Maestro, and has spent 13 years in the tech industry working with startups in the SaaS and mobile space. She’s worked on a diverse range of products – leading the product teams through discovery, prototyping, testing and delivery. Lily also founded ProductTank Bristol and runs ProductCamp in Bristol and Bath.
Randy Silver is a Leadership & Product Coach and Consultant. He gets teams unstuck, helping you to supercharge your results. Randy's held interim CPO and Leadership roles at scale-ups and SMEs, advised start-ups, and been Head of Product at HSBC and Sainsbury’s. He participated in Silicon Valley Product Group’s Coaching the Coaches forum, and speaks frequently at conferences and events. You can join one of communities he runs for CPOs (CPO Circles), Product Managers (Product In the {A}ether) and Product Coaches. He’s the author of What Do We Do Now? A Product Manager’s Guide to Strategy in the Time of COVID-19. A recovering music journalist and editor, Randy also launched Amazon’s music stores in the US & UK.
Remember Everything You Learn from Podcasts
Save insights instantly, chat with episodes, and build lasting knowledge - all powered by AI.
