I received more insights from readers this week on the article I wrote about the sponsorship of growth projects in complicated organizations. Many of them pointed to the fact that, even with sponsors, their cross-functional teams face challenges moving from the lab to the marketplace – especially at one consistent point in the value chain.
The readers I heard from came from many different backgrounds and roles, including R&D, advanced development, product development, manufacturing engineering, planning, and operations. Yet they all pointed to challenges crossing the same boundary – it’s a boundary that routinely emerges in the growth work I do, as well.
In nearly every firm I’ve coached or consulted in, there is the boundary between the product design function and the fulfillment function. You can tell when you cross this boundary (either physically or virtually) because changes commonly occur in three ways:
First, is language and communications. For example, while product teams round off their numbers, ops teams use precision. A product manager may be talking about a million dollar deal, while the ops team says it’s only $880k. They both have the same thing in mind, but in the ops world, $120k difference is a big deal.
Second, is time expectations. When a manufacturing leader ok’s the use of a manufacturing asset for two hours, they mean 120 minutes and no more. Product teams routinely underestimate the amount of time they really need, and can’t understand why the production environment is so unforgiving.
Third, is the point of view. Product leaders are typically big picture thinkers who insist on sharing the whole vision of why what they want to be done is important. The hard-driving operations leader just wants one question answered: “what do you need?” They especially don’t need you to tell them how to do it.
All this friction creates tension and strained relationships, which is why the first answer to any request for operations support is always a quick no.
So how do we build a great relationship?
It begins with understanding that all behavior is rational to those who are doing it. What this means, is that having the operations team push back on the new products team makes perfect rational sense. After all, the op’s team is held accountable for delivering their commitments in product sales, dollars, and quality. Why would they take on an uncertain prototype cycle that will only degrade their metrics?
This implies that we need to have the decision to use these resources at a higher level in the firm, where the big picture can be vetted first. With this process in place, it provides the teams a rational way to trade off the longer-term performance with short-term delivery.
This is why the solution starts at the sponsorship level. When the project is chartered, there needs to be a clear set of benchmarks for both teams that provide for the cross-functional resources needed to achieve the desired results. This is something like a “trial close” in the sales process, where we ask, “if we complete x,x, and x, will you provide the support to take us to the next milestone?”
When done correctly, this provides a razor-sharp target for the product team and avoids the costly delays that can happen when the lower level managers get stuck in a confronting negotiation cycle. This also provides a path for a complete cross-functional team, with strong members from both design and operations.
If these needs are not worked out well, a common pathology is to starve the dev team of key insight from operations, which makes prototyping and scale up even more painful.
With subject matter experts from both “sides of the bridge,” this highly functional team can nearly eliminate the “speed bump” between the two teams by getting to the heart of the issues using “sprints” that take advantage of the broad insight and capability of the group.
If you’d like to talk more about how to consistently engage cross-functional teams that deliver in the real world, I’d be happy to talk. My practice focuses exclusively on the leaders who are creating new growth projects and taking them into the existing portion of the firm – as well as those who sponsor them.
Please reach out via 847-651-1014 or use this link to set up a short call.
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