Today, agile models are becoming increasingly important within companies. In this context, an essential lever for organizational performance is emerging: cross-functional management. We are far from the traditional silos with a very hierarchical management style but rather in a model where Companies are reinventing the way they mobilize talent.
To talk to us about it very concretely, we met Claude Garcia, a speaker and architect of human and artificial intelligence. She supports leaders, managers and teams in the transformation of organizations by placing cross-functional management at the heart of her expertise.
So, How to adopt cross-functional management and strengthen the robustness of an organization? Answer in this inspiring interview!
1- How can a manager begin to implement cross-functional management in their daily life?
Cross-functional management is very clearly the horizontal management of the organization.
It counteracts this hierarchical, silo-based management, which is still very present in our public and private organizations. Cross-functional management fluidifies, accompanied et developed cross-functional relationships during cross-functional missions or projects. It is the management of cross-functional processes and activities within organizations.
Today, in the landscape of organizations, we see various maturities in terms of culture and cross-functional management:
- Some have already implemented this management model, trained themselves and their teams. As a result, there are a good balance between hierarchical management and cross-functional management with increasingly developed communication.
- Others have only recently started, which weakens the implementationWith management still very hierarchical, cross-functional managers then have difficulty adopting their position and their managerial position.
What is important in setting up cross-functional management are 3 keys: OCP
- Organization: It is necessary to organize cross-functional management, the function, the manager's responsibility, the missions of each person at team level, the responsibility of each person, the positioning...
- Communication: This cross-functional management must be communicated. The cross-functional manager is responsible for the cross-functional mission from A to Z, working with the teams. Therefore, it's important to inform all levels of the organization, as well as line managers.
- Participation: Cross-functional management must be conducted, organized, clarified, and implemented with a strong sense of participatory management. In other words, by giving teams a voice and providing direction. Decisions should not be made exclusively by the cross-functional manager or the steering committee. Everything must be done collaboratively. Some decisions are made by the cross-functional manager, others by management, and others with key stakeholders.
[Read also – Implementing participatory management: Amélie Fenzy’s point of view]
2- In a cross-functional environment, decision-making is often a challenge. What concrete methods do you recommend for creating shared and inclusive decision-making processes?
As previously stated, cross-functional management clearly contradicts hierarchical managementThis is what often leads to a power struggle. This is not necessarily founded or desired but automatically, implicitly present due to the organization.
In short, it is essential to clarify this “line manager/cross-functional manager” pairingTo do this, they must:
- to be trained
- discuss issues and projects
- to be connected and in harmony
- have a common vision
- communicate about teams and skills
The objective for the cross-functional manager is to manage key players without hierarchical links but also hierarchical managers who are often at much higher levels in relation to their status.
In this context, to encourage spontaneous and fluid collaborations between teams, all actions of awareness, cooperation and team involvement are the keyBeyond traditional interviews and cross-functional management meetings, friendly moments of sharing and exchange are welcome.
3- If you had to define the robustness of an organization, what would your definition be?
- First : human intelligence. It is the human sense, the relational sense in posture, in relationships, in communication within the company. This human intelligence can be diagnosed and measured. This involves an assessment of the health of the organization at the human level. For example, the number of bore outs, burn outs, absenteeism, etc.
- Second: communication. Communication means negotiation and cooperation. What role does collaboration play? How will the organization's members work and function together?
- Third: PerformanceWithout it, the company cannot move forward, evolve, or act in this changing environment. A robust company is directly linked to human performance and quantified performance. Today, we can even add performance in terms of innovation. A so-called robust company is one that is sufficiently engaged in exchange, evolution, and adaptation. We talk a lot about agility, emotional, relational, and human intelligence. But it is also creativity, innovation, and the use and adaptation of generative artificial intelligence tools.
In short, it is important to visualize its organization in a cross-functional manner. And this, by taking into account all the key 360° indicators that will allow us to measure the organization in its context, on its market in a given territory. We can no longer ignore the human side. Today, employees and managers must be able to move forward, be trained with this desire to evolve with the times and the necessary energy. And this, by always doing the link between strategy and operations. And of course, maintaining consistency between the cross-functional management strategy, communication and the tools that will be put in place for the teams.
4- How can we measure the impact of cross-functional management on the robustness of the organization and collective performance?
The indicators will depend on the cross-functional missions. I will give you two very concrete examples:
Example 1:
I support teams in a tourism organization. With the management committee, we are currently implementing the transformation of the organization both in terms of cross-functional management and artificial intelligence. Here, we will measure the specific criteria and indicators in connection with the strategic objectives and the dashboard implemented by the management committee. That is, indicators of turnover, margin, performance and customer satisfaction, for example.
Example 2:
Another example, in an organization where I worked to implement artificial intelligence for a human resources team, we are more focused on indicators such as time savings and organizational efficiency. We therefore, concretely, measured low and high value-added tasks, the time spent on these tasks, etc. Following which, we implemented the artificial intelligence tool, THE right tool, which reduces the time spent on low value-added tasks. In this example, concretely, an HR manager saves time on sorting CVs to take a deeper look at her candidates or even involve her teams in recruitment to make it a more participatory, less directive recruitment process. The key is therefore to integrate transversality into recruitment.
Today, we can no longer talk about transformation without talking about cross-functional management.
5- What do you think of companies that equip themselves with a tool or solution to facilitate cross-functional management?
It is, for me, essential that companies implement tools to facilitate cross-functional management. They are, today, more than necessary in order to help with support and cross-functional communication, in all projects transformation and change.
But, it is still necessary that they are common solutions for exchanging, sharing, dialoguing and which can respond to employees from different services, from different cultures.
Tools to facilitate cross-functional management must provide meaning as well as real management.
A tool for a tool, no! We need to ask ourselves the right questions: for what purposes? The tool must therefore really do the job integral part of the organization's strategy. This is the key to success for teams to take ownership of it, commit to it, get involved and for its use to be systematic and anchored in daily life. This promotes the efficiency and fluidity of communication.
Additionally, it's important to integrate ambassadors to manage and enhance the tool. These ambassadors must have human intelligence skills, but not only that. There are a range of intelligences:
- Human intelligence: common sense about oneself, one's posture, one's relationship and one's humility towards others.
- Relational intelligence: the ability to understand and interact with others effectively and appropriately.
- Emotional intelligence: the ability to perceive, understand, manage and express one's own emotions as well as those of others.
It is all these intelligences that must be taken into consideration and that will create ambassadors, the talents of tomorrow. They are not necessarily technical experts, but managerial experts. They have human qualities, Communication in order to manage teams with humility, communication, involvement and develop trust in teams.
To go further in the application of cross-functional management and the energizing of your teams, we offer you a guide of best practices to optimize collaboration and performance through collective intelligence.
