Conflicting ideas about company image and mission. While financial departments may want to show how well the company is doing to company shareholders, accountants may have concerns about keeping returns ethical and compliant with regulations, even if it means showing less of a profit. Marketing department's desires to reach out to a potentially lucrative new market may face operations obstacles.
Personality conflicts -- quite simply the personality profile of employees drawn to different specialties might be quite distinct, and not altogether compatible, even if they are part of the same organization -- the departments may have different organizational cultures.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of using a cross-functional team in redesigning a company's transformation process?
"cross-functional team is a group of employees from various functional areas of the organization...who are all focused on a specific objective and are responsible to work as a team to improve coordination and innovation across divisions and resolve mutual problems" (Kotelnikov, 2007). By using a cross-functional team conflicts between different departments are more likely to be aired immediately, rather than result in greater problems later down the line. Also, this type of team can bring a more nuanced and multifaceted perspective to the need for an organizational transformation. The ideal of these types of teams are that they create synergy and out-of-the-box thinking by providing multiple perspectives. These teams can also be used to dismantle outmoded organizational hierarchies. Cross-functional teams can facilitate communication between branches of the company that traditionally do not have very much interaction with one another, and create a more integrated organizational atmosphere in general. GM has been criticized in the past for being excessively hierarchical and during a major organizational overhaul, creating an organization that integrates, for example, marketing analysis of consumer desires with restructuring operational functions might prevent bad decisions being made in the future by specific departments.
However, "is not easy, pulling a group of diverse individuals together to work as a team. Barriers abound, in the form...
Yet at a time when companies are increasingly relying on cross-functional teams at every level to generate innovative ideas, it's more crucial than ever to tap the fresh thinking that teams can provide" (Johnson, 2005).Teams are usually rewarded collectively, which can make creating a cohesive unit between individuals from different organizational difficult -- the challenges of a crisis and pressure to complete a daunting task, such as a major restructuring, in a tight time frame could be counterproductive because of hostility and unfamiliarity.
Thus, the advantages of cross-functional teams are as thus:
Multiple perspectives on the same problem
New ideas through clashing multiple perspectives
Doing away with organizational hierarchies and/or outmoded ways of thinking through enhanced communication
The disadvantages:
Lack of team cohesiveness in a crisis situation
Difficulty of overcoming organizational territories
Increased risk of personality conflicts during an organizational crisis
Overall, the benefits seem to outweigh the potential disadvantages, and if territories and barriers can be overcome, the organization will emerge stronger as a result. But it must be stressed that problems must be anticipated, and not be assumed to evaporate, merely because all team members are ultimately embarked upon the same goal of positive change.
Works Cited
Einstein, Paul. (19 Aug 2002). "Transformation at General Motors." Car Connection.
Retrieved 12 Jun 2007 at http://www.thecarconnection.com/Auto_News/Daily_Auto_News/Transformation_at_General_Motors.S173.A5203.html
Johnson, Lauren Keller. (21 Oct 2005). "Overcoming Barriers that Destroy Teams."
Retrieved 12 Jun 2007 at http://hbswk.hbs.edu/archive/5068.html
Kotelnikov, Vadim. (2007) "Cross Functional Teams." Ten3 Business e-COACH.
1000 ventures.com Retrieved 12 Jun 2007 at http://www.1000ventures.com/business_guide/crosscuttings/cross-functional_teams.html
