Teamwork makes the dream work. It is cliché, and yet true. But teamwork often involves multiple departments and various roles, each with individual goals and priorities. As a cross-functional collaborative team, it’s important to recognize where everyone is coming from and how those objectives can be reached from a company perspective. Sometimes that means dialing down individual ideas to serve the greater good. That is hard to do and it requires good leadership to corral everyone around that vision.
Vision is important and execution must follow. There is no magic formula to succeeding with cross-functional teams. Instead, it takes a greater understanding of the issues: motivations, metrics, autonomy, support, time, and understanding. We asked our Fast Company Impact Council members about their approach to cross-functional collaboration, and here is what 21 of our members shared.
1. ALIGN ON PROBLEMS, BUILD TRUST
Cross-functional work breaks down when teams optimize for their own metrics instead of a shared outcome. I focus first on aligning around the problem we’re solving, then building trust through consistent, transparent communication. When people understand the larger objective and trust one another, collaboration shifts from coordination to shared ownership. — Ajay Tejasvi, TLEX
2. EMBED COLLABORATION IN THE OPERATING MODEL
Innovation rarely happens in isolation. It happens at the intersection of disciplines, shaping our approach to cross-functional collaboration. Our enterprise innovation incubator operates at those intersections. Instead of a centralized R&D function that hands off ideas at the finish line, we partner with teams to maximize context, align metrics, and establish joint ownership from the start. That’s critical because innovation breaks down when layered onto existing work or isolated in one function. By embedding collaboration into the operating model, we can test ideas faster and give innovations a stronger path to adoption. — Adam L’Italien, Liberty Mutual Insurance
3. VALUE, IMPACT, COMMON GOAL
The best cross-functional teams share three things. Everyone feels valued. Everyone sees their impact. Everyone is galvanized behind a common goal. A leader’s job is to build those conditions. I have watched cross-functional teams that get this right deliver results that exceed the team’s highest expectations. — Manoj Raghunandanan, Insulet
4. INVOLVE KEY STAKEHOLDERS FROM THE START
Cross-functional collaboration is a critical driver of organizational success; no department should operate alone. It’s important to create alignment around shared objectives while ensuring every function understands how its decisions affect the broader business. I encourage teams to involve key stakeholders at the beginning of initiatives, establish clear ownership, and maintain open communication throughout execution. When people understand the “why” behind decisions and the impact on their colleagues, they make better decisions. It’s about creating alignment that enables the entire organization to perform at its highest level. — David Klanecky, Cirba Solutions
5. BEGIN WITH A CLEAR CHALLENGE
The most effective cross-functional work starts with a clear challenge and the people who understand it best. When the right teams are aligned around one outcome and learning together in the real operating environment, decisions improve, execution gets stronger, and adoption comes faster. This is how collaboration turns into real progress for the business and better results for customers. — Dennis Anderson, ArcBest
6. TREAT IT LIKE A DEMOCRACY
Our approach to cross-functional collaboration is like democracy; it’s messy, but in the end it’s a great result. We think about the end state, with a client-centric perspective. We encourage open communication across disciplines, encourage diverse perspectives, and always ask provocative questions that challenge the status quo. The ultimate goal is to unlock value to deliver to our clients. — Chris Bailey, Bailey Brand Consulting
7. IT’S A RELATIONSHIP ISSUE
Empathy is the most underrated leadership skill. Most cross-functional problems aren’t process problems, they’re relationship problems. Great collaboration starts with understanding what another team is measured on, what pressure they’re under, and what headaches they’re dealing with today, not next quarter. My rule: If I don’t know your dog’s name, we’re not quite there yet. The strongest teams aren’t conflict-free, they’re trust-rich. They can argue at 10 a.m. and happily sit next to each other in the pub at 6 p.m. — Emily Kortlang, Yerba Madre
8. LIKE AND RESPECT
Every product we build requires our best minds in design, development, and business strategy. And everyone has a different and valid point of view on what would be best for a project at any given time. By meeting weekly and keeping each other posted on Slack throughout our days, we’re able to align on priorities that are in the best interest of the project as a whole. I’ve always had an intentionally small and tight-knit team, because liking and respecting one another is what makes this all work. — Lindsey Witmer Collins, WLCM App Studio and Scribbly Books
9. THE JAZZ BAND
My North Star is the jazz band rather than the orchestra. An orchestra needs a conductor, a score, and for everyone to be playing their assigned part in perfect sequence. A jazz band sets context, establishes the key, and then trusts each player to bring something the others can’t—good surprises are welcome. It requires more trust and more clarity of purpose, but everyone seems to be having more fun. — Hala Hanna, MIT Solve
10. SHARE THE HOW AND WHY
I’ve found that the best way to foster cross-functional collaboration is to help other teams truly understand what you do and why it’s important for the company. I do a teach-in once a quarter for new employees to help them understand what my team does and how what we do adds to the overall success of the business. When teams understand that you are as invested in their success as they are, collaboration comes much more easily. — Regan Parker, ShiftKey
11. COMMIT TO COLLECTIVE PROBLEM-SOLVING
Cross-functional collaboration starts with a shared vision and a commitment to collective problem-solving. We create opportunities for our teams to challenge assumptions, share expertise, and contribute beyond traditional roles. When everyone understands how their work connects to the larger goal, collaboration becomes less about coordination and more about co-creation. — Susan Watts, SPACECRAFT
12. MUTUAL VALUE AND AUTHORITY
We facilitate a lot of cross-functional collaboration for leading brands between marketing, design, product, and people teams. There are two key ingredients. The first is establishing mutual value for all functions from the outset so that people want to lean in. The second is establishing heavyweight authority behind the initiative so that people are compelled to lean in. The stronger the mutual value, the less need for authority, but having both is ideal. — Neil Barrie, 21st Century Brand
13. CLEAR AND COMPELLING SHARED METRICS
I start by assuming everyone in the room is optimizing for something legitimate—they’re just not always optimizing for the same thing. Collaboration breaks down because people are working from genuinely different definitions of success. My job is to make the shared definition so clear and compelling that it becomes more interesting than any individual agenda. When people feel like they’re building something together rather than protecting something separately, the entire dynamic changes. — Muneer Panjwani, Engage for Good | The Halo Awards
14. COLLABORATION AND TRANSPARENCY ARE THE DEFAULT
Cross-functional collaboration is the engine behind real growth and innovation. Think about the feedback loop that’s possible when sales, marketing, product, and operations are genuinely aligned and sharing information freely. Sales hears what customers need. Marketing understands how the message is landing. Operations knows what’s actually executable. The product takes all of that signal and builds something better. The leaders driving the most growth are building cultures where collaboration and transparency are the default, not the exception. — Meredith Rosenberg, NU Advisory Partners
15. AGREE ON THE NORTH STAR
First, agree on the North Star. The foundation of every decision and outcome of every collaboration should be to reach the goal faster, more effectively, or more efficiently. Then, when teams start to veer off course, you can bring them back to center. — Bo Zhao, Baby Gear Group
16. A SHARED OUTCOME
The best cross-functional collaboration starts with a shared outcome, not a shared function. I bring the right people together early, align on what success looks like, and make sure everyone understands how their expertise contributes to the end goal. When teams are clear on the objective and feel ownership of the solution, collaboration becomes much easier, and—in my experience—execution gets faster. — Amanda Cimaglia, James Hardie
17. DEFINE ONE SHARED METRIC
Cross-functional collaboration breaks because of incentives, not personalities. Finance is measured on cost. Ops on throughput. Sales on revenue. Three different P&Ls, three different scoreboards, and we wonder why nobody agrees. Before any cross-functional project we touch, every team has to define the one shared metric they’ll all be scored on. We do this first in every cross-functional engagement we run. It’s the cheapest fix and the most reliable one we’ve found. — Andra Vaduva, SafeSpace
18. REAL WORK ON A REGULAR CADENCE
Collaboration that lives in a stated company value is aspiration, not practice, and aspiration does not ship products. The only thing I have seen work at scale is getting people into the same room around real work on a regular cadence. Not presentations, not status updates. Real work, in progress, that everyone has a stake in making better. We run structured design reviews and critiques that bring product, engineering, and business stakeholders together consistently, and over time, something shifts. People stop defending their function and start solving for the same outcome. That is when you know it has taken root. — Arin Bhowmick, SAP
19. SMALL TEAMS, CLEAR MANDATE, REAL ACCOUNTABILITY
The best cross-functional work happens in small teams with a clear mandate and real accountability. Not a committee. Not a standing meeting. A small group of people who understand the goal, know what decisions they own, and are accountable for the outcome. The leader’s job is to set the vision, put the right team in place, and stay close enough to support without getting in the way. — Todd James, Aurora Insights LLC
20. UNDERSTAND THE BROADER STRATEGY
I see myself as the integrator across the business. Every team has deep expertise in its own area, so my focus is ensuring those teams are aligned, sharing information, and moving toward the same goals. Collaboration works best when people understand the broader strategy and have the autonomy to execute within their function. — Ben Jeffries, Influencer
21. PRIORITIZE SHARED GOALS
My approach to cross-functional collaboration starts with a clear principle: No department can claim victory unless the business is succeeding. If marketing is generating pipeline, but sales isn’t hitting revenue targets, that’s not success—it’s a signal that we need better alignment and shared accountability across teams. That’s why I prioritize shared goals across marketing, sales, customer success, and renewals. This ensures everyone is measured against the same business outcomes, not siloed metrics. Ultimately, true collaboration comes from shared accountability and a collective definition of success. — Melissa Puls, Ivanti
