In engineering, they're like the way that we could make more use of engineers is to have more structure so that we can be more specialized. The matrix that's emerging in my mind is like, this is the t-shirt. Where is our merch? We need a merch team. High specialization, low context. Great fit. A transformer who's going into an existing project that we've had for two years. Exact opposite. High generalist, high context. Whoops. Cannot just add bodies.
Picture it: Your company’s landed on an important and shiny new project and it needs a team to bring it to life. Cue the barrage of big questions—questions like: “So…who’s on this team? What support will they receive? When will they meet? Wait, is this extra work or something different?”Welcome to the wonderful world of cross-functional teaming. Standing up a cross-functional team is a place where plenty of organizations stumble—because it’s asking most systems to play a game they aren’t designed to play well.
In this episode of Brave New Work, Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans team up (see what we did there?) to answer questions like:
- How should cross-functional teams—as well as the projects they work on—be chartered?
- Should the size and scope of an idea impact how a team is designed?
- What level and kind of authority should cross-functional teams be given?
- What are the first moves cross-functional teams always need to make?
- How can we bake experimentation into this cake?
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