Enhancing performance of Cross-Functional Teams at a leading E-Commerce Business

Ideasutra developed and executed a transformational program aimed at enhancing the effectiveness of cross-functional teams, using visual-thinking frameworks and models.

The Challenges that arise from Rapid and Massive Growth

One of the consequences of rapid growth is the resulting lack of cohesiveness between various functions that arises from the added business complexity.

Functional cohesion is as much a symptom of culture as it is of other meaningful organizational processes. Cross-functional teams at mature organizations organically evolve to cohere over the years, sometimes over decades, while venture capital fuelled startups sometimes find themselves grappling with the disorder that arises from sudden growth and expansion.

As a run up to one of the largest acquisitions in Indian startup history, our client, a leading E-Commerce business, brought us onboard to help the leadership team find better ways to develop effective means to collaborate between various business functions.

We worked closely with the client management team, over a 3-month period, to first map out the desired outcomes and then we designed and executed a series of sessions especially crafted to this particular organization’s work culture and style.

Our team mapped out the individual and sometimes overlapping needs through a series of stakeholder interviews, site observations and shadowing. We identified areas that are both opportunities and challenges for cross-functional collaboration.

Setting the stage for the Workshops

Prior to conducting visual-thinking workshops, we conducted a multi-layered internal communications campaign aimed at:

1. Conveying the core values of the organization, and how these values address the disruption caused by radical change.
2. Sensitizing senior leaders who will participate in upcoming decision-making workshops on the themes that we will be exploring using a storybook style collection of people and organizations who dealt with similar challenges.

We used a combination of environmental graphics such as posters, wall murals and danglers for mass internal communication. We also designed personalized dockets containing the business storybook and other preparatory material to prep and sensitize senior leaders to the themes that will be explored in the upcoming workshop.

Outcomes of the Program

The immediate outcome of the ideation sessions were an understanding and agreement by the management and the leaders of various functions on the need for a unified approach to managing change. Over the long term, cross-functional teams have a clearer line of communication for projects that require collaborative execution.

Leaders also understood visual planning for cross-functional work not just for ongoing projects, but also for potential needs that may arise in the near future.

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