Cross functional meaning: work that spans departments
Cross-functional means people from different departments of one company working toward a single goal. Product, sales, finance and legal might each send someone. A cross-functional team borrows its members from their usual teams.
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It's a cross-functional project, Zofia, so legal, sales and design all join the kickoff.
What did they mean?
Filed under C jargon.
What cross-functional means
A function is a department
In company language, a function is a department. Cross-functional work pulls in people from several departments to reach one goal. A product launch is the usual example, with product, engineering, marketing, sales and legal each doing a part.
Dictionaries that list the word don’t say when it was first used. One big American dictionary leaves it out.
How a cross-functional team runs
A cross-functional team is usually temporary. Each member keeps their own department’s manager and gets a second boss for the project.
Departments tend to send their subject matter experts, the people who know their part of the work best.
Make the group small and the deadline urgent, and the same setup gets called a tiger team.
Cross-functional work in the calendar
The meetings got bigger
Meetings with 65 or more attendees are growing faster than any other size, probably because cross-functional teams keep getting more complicated. The share of meetings that cross time zones is up 35% since 2021. It’s now nearly a third.
On every cross-functional call, somebody is eating breakfast and somebody is missing dinner.
The weekly sync
The weekly sync is where each department on a cross-functional project reports its progress. It stays on a weekly cadence whether anything moved or not.
Plenty of these syncs could be a shared document with a comment box.
Our Meeting or Email game is for every meeting that could have been an email. Reminders count down one at a time, and you send each one back as an email, as late as you dare.
Who gets to decide
In a cross-functional team, everyone can say no and nobody can say yes. So decisions end up back with the managers the team was meant to work around. The fix is to name one person who decides.
Bigger projects draw up a RACI chart. It lists who is responsible, accountable, consulted and informed for each task, with one name per row under accountable.
Cross-functional in a job ad
“Works cross-functionally” in a job description means the role needs things from people who don’t report to it. What they’re hiring for is persuasion.
Cross-functional in a self-review
In a review, “led a cross-functional project” means you held meetings with people who didn’t report to you and shipped something anyway. That line turns up every year in self-review season.
An email that books a cross-functional sync
Subject: Pricing page launch, weekly check-in
Hi all, I’m adding a 30-minute
cross-functional syncmeeting with every team on Thursdays until launch. Product, sales, legal and support, one person each. Bring one blocker or none, and we finish early.
Cross-functional and its cousins
Multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary
Cross-functional mixes departments inside one employer, while multidisciplinary mixes subjects of study, as in a multidisciplinary course. One dictionary lists interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary as close relatives of cross-functional.
Silos
Silos are departments that keep their information to themselves. The usual fix is a cross-functional team.
Australian office workers over 65 dislike “break down the silo” more than any other piece of corporate jargon.
Cross-functional in a sentence
It's a cross-functional project, Zofia, so legal, sales and design all join the kickoff.
Experience leading cross-functional teams is a must for this role.
My week is six cross-functional syncs and one hour to do the work they discuss.
To make senior, you need cross-functional impact, Jasper, so start helping teams that don't report to your boss.
Questions about cross-functional work
What is another word for cross-functional?
Interdepartmental, cross-team or multi-team. In a plain email, "with people from sales, legal and IT" works better, because it names who is involved.
What is the meaning of cross-functional collaboration?
Cross-functional collaboration means people from different departments working toward one result, such as a launch or a new process. It needs one person who can make the final call, or every decision goes back up to the department heads.
What is a cross-functional process?
A cross-functional process is one that passes through several departments before it's finished. Hiring is one. The manager picks the candidate, HR makes the offer, finance approves the pay and IT orders the laptop.
What is the difference between cross-functional and multidisciplinary?
Cross-functional mixes departments inside one company. Multidisciplinary mixes subjects of study, though business dictionaries also use it for teams with different kinds of knowledge.
Does cross-functional have a hyphen?
Yes, a business English dictionary spells cross-functional with a hyphen. Another dictionary lists crossfunctional as a single word.