Cross-Function not DYS-Function: How to Manage and Establish Cross-Functional Teams

When millions of dollars rely on email - it's time to fix your cross-functional process

The word "cross-functional" has been thrown around in business circles for several years now, but if you dig deeper, each person you speak to might have a different idea of what that means in action. The textbook definition sounds simple enough: "involving or composed of people or departments that do different types of work within the same company." 

Marketing communicates with Sales, Sales communicates with Finance, Finance to leadership, and so goes the merry-go-round. Easy, Right? (insert sarcasm here)

But business is complex, and communication is even more complex. Different departments have different technical languages, terms, and goals. As your business grows, so does your need for ensuring each department and team have clear lines of sight and are working as one unit. The question isn't whether you need cross-functional coordination—it's whether you're building it intentionally or letting dysfunction build itself.

Can’t I just tell everyone to sort it out?

Communication is never an easy problem to solve. Each person has an idea in their head, and shifting to a new idea can be challenging. Everyone is taking on more daily tasks, and it feels like slowing down to share information will only create more work. Often, employees aren't even aware they needed to share information until something breaks.

Read that paragraph again, because it defines the key to most stress points within a business structure. Understanding that breakdown can help you change your thinking about management.

The larger a company grows, the more difficult the communication becomes. Silos seem to create themselves when you're not looking. One day you have three departments talking regularly, and the next, you have six departments operating in isolation with competing priorities.

Forming strong cross-communication ties isn't just for large companies. Even companies with 3-5 people need to build cross-functional structures early on to prevent costly misunderstandings and grow toward future success. The habits you establish at ten employees become the foundation—or the dysfunction—at fifty.

The High Price of Bad Cross-Functional Communication

Let's talk about what this actually costs your business:

Rework – Teams complete projects only to discover another department already solved the problem differently, or worse, that the solution doesn't align with what's actually needed.

Double Work – Multiple departments unknowingly working on the same initiative, burning time and budget while creating conflicting outputs.

Opposing Work – One team builds while another tears down. Sales promises features that Product hasn't prioritized. Marketing launches campaigns for services Operations can't deliver.

Customer and Reputation Impact – Clients experience delays, confusion, and broken promises because your internal teams aren't synchronized.

Damage to your bottom line – Company goal misalignment is costly to your revenue as well as your reputation.

Studies show that companies with strong cross-functional collaboration are 21% more profitable and see 15% faster time-to-market than those operating in silos.

I promised solutions, so let’s lead into that with an example that may resonate with you or help you avoid the same mistake at your company.

One company I assisted with struggled with exactly this issue. Prior to my being called in to evaluate the root cause, there was an incident. A newly established sales team was working on a bespoke product line leveraging external partnerships. They landed a large and difficult client who finally said yes after months of negotiation. Before anyone could celebrate, there was a long delay in establishing a technical connection and less-than-perfect communication, which caused the client to back out.

The reputation damage was just as impactful as the revenue loss. Gone was the strategic gain of that partnership, along with the credibility of the entire sales initiative.

During my evaluation, I uncovered a few items at the root of the problem. First, they had newly developed account setup needs, and no one followed through with the technical team to align on process, business need, or handoff procedures.

What was the method for onboarding these gold-standard clients from Sales to the Technical team?

Answer: An email.

The sales team had discovered one name from the other department and sent an email to this unaware person with a few scattered bits of information about the client. To further complicate the issue and delay, the person receiving these emails was not, in fact, the correct person on this team but had been quietly forwarding them to the team lead to handle.

Let's break that down: A new revenue stream and key KPI company strategy with millions of dollars on the line was supported by an email?

Email is not a process, nor will it ever replace good process mapping and team cohesion. Leaving employees to "figure it out" is not a solution.

Ways to find the Function in Cross-Function

It Starts from the Top

If you're the owner, CEO, or high-level business manager, you have an opportunity to help your business succeed through better alignment and cross-functional communication. Here are real steps you can take to create a smooth process.

Get Everyone Together

This can be a virtual meeting—I'm a big proponent of remote work structures, and it absolutely can work with remote teams. Don't feel you have to make a fanfare and rent a conference room, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to plan and align. The key is to have the conversation with the correct people. Align on what you want to do and where you want to go. Tip: Don’t exclude someone because they don’t have the right letters after their name. The real gems at your company are the ones in the trenches who truly understand how things work – and how they will break. Make sure you invite the right people.

Ask direct questions:

• Will this impact anything currently being worked on?

• Does this conflict or negate any work in progress?

• Who needs to be involved from start to finish?

• What information needs to flow between teams, and when?

• Who will own the hand off and follow-through?

Establish Ownership

If you do not have Operations Managers at your company, determine or let the teams tell you who will be the champion to communicate and advocate for that body of work. Is there a PM or Team Lead? Don’t just leave it in the air, you need a point person.

Align Goals Across Leadership

The military has been using a similar method for hundreds of years. I'm not proposing using military structures in your business, but you can glean some good practices and adapt them to solve this problem. Military operations succeed because every unit—from infantry to logistics to intelligence—operates from a unified mission objective with crystal-clear lines of communication and understood handoff protocols.

The top-tier directors and VPs at your company—head of Marketing, Sales, Development, Research, etc.—should all have the same end goals and know their part in achieving that goal. If your plan is to shift your product line to a new market, they should understand why and what market, and know the phase plan for the old product.

This allows them to hand this information down their team and start the dialog that helps unify in the vertical pattern. It avoids some of the silos that develop when leadership is not in sync.

I am obliged to say here that nothing replaces an experienced operations manager or COO. They are the voice that says, "That's a great idea, but I think Jill's team is already working on that—we should align with them." They keep the trains all going without any train running into another. But I understand not every business is structured in that way.

Vertical to Horizontal

I have mentioned the vertical communication aspect but cross functional communication is just the opposite, its horizontal. That poses a different set of issues for business structures.

Don't just say, "Make it happen." Make it clear that a process plan needs to be written up, even a simple one.

Establish a charter or high-level goal and document:

• WHO it will impact

• WHAT departments are involved

• WHEN handoffs occur

• HOW information flows

Now assign a facilitator and let them organize who does what and when. Discover the handoff points and ensure it is NOT just an email. Even for small companies, a shared live spreadsheet can be a game changer. Everyone involved sees information in real time as it's added or changed. This is also a great way to determine WHAT data needs to be shared in order to develop a long term solution to cross communication.

Leverage Technology Strategically

There are too many apps to name for solving communication problems and team handoffs. You can start by considering what tech stack you have currently and investigating if there's a way to utilize it—even if it's temporary while you keep things going until you really understand what you need.

Use something robust with actual handoff points and completion lists. Hint: These also have data options. If you set it up from the start, most of these apps allow some kind of data sorting or collection. Now, as things are moving, you can look back a month and see how long things take, where they sit, and why.

Daily Stand-Ups with Cross-Functional Teams

Reframe this software project management technique to align Sales, Marketing, Operations, Developers, and Leadership if needed. It works and it is powerful if managed correctly.

Structure:

Designate a facilitator: Again, that PM, Ops, or lead person who will schedule the meeting, document outcomes, and keep it moving and on topic. Choose wisely, this is a critical role.

Attendees – be strategic and consider alignment and where you can leverage representatives from each cross functional segment. You may need a few separate focused Daily’s with one weekly central if your team is large.

Scheduling:

·       Duration - 15 Minutes (30 if you have more than 6 people, cut it down as you get things flowing) Hint: As you start building real internal solutions it will get shorter.

• Make it reliable - Meet at the same time, same place (virtual or physical), every day.

• Make it part of the work - Make attendance non-negotiable for core team members.

Hint: if someone cannot attend due to vacation or sickness request a stand in. The goal is that someone on that team is circulating information.

Agenda:

• Round robin: Each person shares:

  • 30 second or less brief of what they are working on (High level goal)

  • Any blockers or needs from other departments (Where you are stuck)

  • Focus on handoff points, dependencies, and quick problem-solving

·       Track Ownership - The Facilitator writes down actions and identifies the responsible parties (Action & Owner)

·       Review Unresolved Actions - After round robin the facilitator can bring up any old actions to ensure they were resolved.

·       Document Decisions - On a shared document define what decisions were made and when – everyone should reference this document as the guiding light if they need to know final outcomes or direction. Bonus: This is 24/7 access and does not rely on halting work to ask someone for confirmation.

• Schedule deeper dives separately—this meeting is for awareness, not solutions. Don’t- start high level problem solving or have meeting take over – why you need someone to keep things moving!

This simple practice surfaces issues before they become crises. It allows more focused one on one meetings to take place separately which will either solve problems or identify critical pinch points early.  Warning: Don’t fall into the too-many-useless-meetings trap. Stay focused and productive. (I will have a future article covering meeting hygiene.)

Cross-functional shadowing – nothing replaces “show me how you do that” to bridge communication breakdowns with paired learning. It may take an hour or a day for one team member to shadow another but the return on that investment is astronomical.

Process mapping – During the paired learning or as a separate mini project, assign an individual to build a document outlining key steps in a process. Literal visibility elevates many communication breakdowns. Use pictures, boxes, or even a simple 1,2,3 to show others what is happening, where handoff occurs, (or should occur) what is critical path, and note what systems are being used with any connection points. This is a key tool for the beginning stages to determine and create better long-term solutions.

Create a culture of functional disagreement – If the new goal or project needs departments that have not normally worked together before. Break the barriers, have a casual meeting to set up introductions prior to brainstorming sessions or problem solving. Create a safe space for dissenting views, the point is to pressure test a new process or project function. Encourage teams to challenge points of failure. Discourage finger pointing, or mindless agreement simply because the “boss” is in the room. This is the space to kick the tires and come up with some new ideas. There are no bad ideas. That one person who is too afraid to speak out may have the stellar solution or information that brings in all into focus. Make sure they are heard.

Translation, not just communication

This is where good documentation can help. Start a list of terms and definition with one team and as you build with another team do the same, you will notice huge differences in definitions for similar words or terms. Make this your common glossary. Put this up on the screen or place where everyone can see it at each meeting, like that Daily Stand Up. Point to a term if two teams seem to have friction. Verify we are all referring to the same concepts, “when you say “green” you mean this?”

There is a layer deeper to communication between teams to plan around. Finance speaks in ROI and cost-benefit ratios. Engineering talks in technical debt and sprint velocity. Marketing thinks in customer journey stages and conversion funnels. It goes beyond words these are the terms these departments use to evaluate success. Develop some common success metrics for this shared goal and unify the terminology across your audience. It can branch into individual metrics per team outside the cross-functional junction point but everyone knows “Twelve new clients set up and running by June 1 equals success.”

Red Flags: Ways to Determine If You Need Help

• Handoff delays between teams – Your customers don't get payment until mid-month because someone from Sales has to populate numbers and send to Finance, who sends to Payment…

• "We didn't know" – Teams regularly surprised by decisions or work from other departments

• Blame loops – When something goes wrong, teams point fingers rather than solving problems

• Duplicate tools – Different departments using different systems to track the same information

• Leadership as go-between – Executives spending most of their time translating between departments

• Revenue leakage – Deals falling through or customers churning due to poor internal coordination

If you're seeing multiple red flags, you're not alone. Most companies hit these pain points as they grow. The difference between companies that scale successfully and those that stall is how quickly they address the underlying process gaps.

Need Help Beyond DIY?

Understanding these principles is one thing. Implementing them in your specific environment—with your unique mix of personalities, legacy systems, and business pressures—is another.

Sometimes you need an outside perspective to:

• Diagnose where the real breakdowns are happening (it's rarely where you think)

• Design processes that fit your actual workflow, not generic templates

• Navigate the company cultural dynamics that keep dysfunction thriving

• Build sustainable systems that work after the consultant leaves

These problems are solvable. I've seen companies transform from email-based chaos to smooth cross-functional execution. It starts with recognizing that coordination is a strategic capability, not something that happens automatically.

Cross-functional teams aren't a nice-to-have. They're how modern businesses compete. But calling something "cross-functional" doesn't make it work. You need intentional design: clear processes, aligned goals, structured handoffs, and leadership that models and reinforces coordination.

You can continue letting silos build themselves, or you can build bridges. The companies that choose the latter don't just avoid costly mistakes—they move faster, innovate better, and win more often.

Are you ready to move from Cross-Dysfunctions to Cross-Function?

Christa Jackson

GrowOp Business Consulting & Operations Management

GrowOp.Biz