What is a cross functional team?

Cross functional team is a group of people with different functional expertise,

working towards a common goal

Characteristics of a cross functional team

• it may include people from different departments such as Finance, Marketing,
Operations, human resource management.
• it includes employees from all levels of an organization.
• teams often function as self directed responding to, but not specific directions.
• it may include different kinds of people
– leader- aims to get the best out of everyone
– expert- provides specialist advice
–Ambassador- make friends easily
– innovator- provides source of vision, ingenuity and creativity
– conformer- helpful ,reliable co-operation
Competitive advantages of a cross functional team
• Speed- they are appropriately empowered get things done faster specially
product development and customer service.
• Complexity- improve an organization’s ability to solve complex problems because
they bring together people with different skill sets, experience and perception.
• Creativity- new product and service, breakthrough, come from clash of ideas, not
from interaction among people with similar ideas.
• Customer focus- cross functional teams focus all of the organization’s efforts on
satisfying a specific internal or external customer or group of customers
• Organizational learning- team members pick up technical and professional skills
more easily, gain important knowledge about other areas of the organization and
learn how to work with people with different skills and cultural behaviors.
• Single point of contact- the team promote, effective and efficient teaming by
identifying one place to go for information and decisions about a project or
customer
Disadvantages of cross functional teams
• In any cross functional team diversity is their main strength and on the other
hand it can represent their main weakness.
when so many different perceptions and attitudes gather at a single table
maintaining a congenial, productive atmosphere can be difficult.
• To have success and optimum results from cross functional teams it is essential
to establish clear goals, objectives and deadlines for the team.
• Managing cross functional team is a difficult task.
• Team members must be aware of what has to done from his side, other wise it is
difficult to get best outcome from them
 General electrical
Background
• GE is a global infrastructure, finance and media company taking on the world’s
toughest challenges.
• General electrical has continuously shaped our world with groundbreaking
innovations for over 130 years such as light bulbs to fuel cell technology, to
cleaner, more efficient jet engines etc.
• General electrical always moving towards a unique goal under an unique theme
“Why predict the future when you can create it?”.
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