The challenges of leading a cross functional team AND managing a department

Here at GigMasters, we are always working on a million things at once. Ok, maybe not a million but a lot! Running a bustling event services marketplace requires a ton of work both on the front end of the site (what consumers see), and on the back end as well (what consumers don't see). A side effect of this is that our employees can find it hard at times to feel connected to why they are working on these different initiatives. It can start to feel like a random swirl of projects.

So earlier this year we decided to address this. The goal was to make sure that for every project being worked on, employees knew exactly which goal was being addressed.

We created four cross functional teams. Each team was named after its primary goal to reduce confusion. Composed of a mix of employees from different departments, the teams are as follows:

• Client Traffic - This team tasked with bringing more party planners to our site. It is led by our VP of Marketing. It employs aggressive content creation, digital marketing, advertising, social media, & PR.
• Booking Growth - This team is led by our VP of Technology and is tasked with improving our core marketplace booking functionality. The goal is to drive more bookings to our members. Design, UX, and mobile/site development are core to this team.
• Member Growth - This team is led by our senior marketing manager working closely with our company President. The goal here is straight forward - to grow the number of paying members.
  

• Lead Generation and Category Expansion - This team directly supports the efforts of the Member Growth team by bringing more potential members into the fold.  Inbound marketing is core to this team's approach.

We then went through our project backlog, and determined which project went with which team. If a project didn't address one of these goals, we didn't tackle it (with a few exceptions!).

Each team was assigned a business lead and we were off to the races. Everything went off without a hitch, right? Not entirely. There was one issue that I had not foreseen.

It has to do with the folks who were asked to lead a cross functional team and were already managing a department. An example is our VP of Marketing who leads the cross functional Client Traffic team AND manages the Marketing department. Another is our VP of Technology who leads our Booking Growth team AND manages the Tech department.

The issue is this - how could they effectively manage those folks in their department who have different primary goals (via the cross functional teams) from their own? If they, as business leads, were being judged on their effectiveness in achieving their cross functional team's primary goal, then why would they want to divert time and energy managing folks who have different goals?

It is a legitimate concern. Here are my thoughts:

1. First, as our company grows in headcount, we could potentially separate these roles.  We could let the department managers focus on running their departments, and we could have other folks come in as business leads on the cross functional teams. We may or may not do this, but a larger team would allow for this possibility.
   
   
2. Secondly, as business conditions change, we may switch up these cross functional teams. We may decide that we want to shift focus and align teams around slightly different goals. Nothing we do organizational is burned in stone and changing things up periodically (but not too often!) keeps things fresh.
   
   
3. Thirdly and perhaps MOST importantly, our managers are judged on the whole body of their work, not just one goal. We are still a small team, and everyone is asked to contribute on a number of fronts.  So my job as CEO is to reassure these managers they I value the full spectrum of their contributions. Certain goals will become more important at certain times as business conditions change, but I judge on the complete package.

Despite the challenges of a department manager running a cross functional team, I'm still very much in favor. Not only does it allow them to see the business from a different angle, it also breaks down traditional departmental silos. It allows them the opportunity  to work closely with folks outside of their department and strengthen those bonds.

As long as we continue to remind ourselves that we are all focused on the same overall company mission - to help our members earn a living doing what they love - then the rest is just details.