So this was the question I got:
♦ What do you understand by cross-functional teams?
♣ Give an example of any industry that needs to have such teams
♥ In your opinion give one reason why cross-functional teams cannot work out?
♦ A cross functional team is a group that consists of people with different specialised skills working together towards a common goal or objective. The team includes people from the different departments in the organization, such as finance, planning, human resource and marketing. The team is led by a group leader, and decisions made within the group are usually done by consensus (majority agreeing to the decision). Each member can also take charge when it comes to a problem that is in their field of expertise.
♣ All organisations would require cross-functional teams if they wish to be more efficient and effective in their business as having cross-functional teams would actually cut back the amount of time and effort spent trying to correct an error, compared to a team that only consist of people from the same department.
One such example would be the fast food industry. The people involved will be those on the frontline of service, like counter staffs, restaurant managers and the cooks, as well as the people who work behind the scenes, like the marketing, finance, human resource and planning departments. The counter staffs, restaurant managers and cooks are in-charge of taking the customers’ orders correctly, serving the food and also to appease a customer should a problem arise while the marketing and finance departments would be in-charge of coming up with advertisements to draw people’s attention and to plan the company’s budget and finances so that operations can run smoothly.
♥ A cross-functional team will not be able to work out if the members are not able to cooperate with each other, having constant disputes over decisions that have to be made. Also, if the team leader is incompetent in leading the team, it is sure to fail as well.
However, I feel that stating outright that cross-functional teams cannot work out is not entirely correct either. There will always be successes and failures in everything we do, just like there are two sides to a coin.
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I was a little "um... what?" when I first saw this question, especially since some of us got questions like "What is Project Management?" (yes, Angie, I'm referring to you, hahaha XD). Kind of dragged doing the question until today, but I soon realised that cross-functional teams are... well, they're everywhere! You don't even have to look hard to find one. It's sort of one of those "easy-to-miss-everyday-things-we-take-for-granted" things.
So I guess I'd say I learnt pretty much from this 3 simple questions. They looked pretty tough at first but hey, guess you can't judge a book by its cover! ;)
