How to Lead a Cross-Functional Team Collaboration With CoSchedule

How to Lead a Cross-Functional Team Collaboration With Cross-functional teams are assembled to tackle complexity. A group of specialists is stronger than a handful of generalists. But individual specialists are too narrow to handle the sprawling landscape of modern marketing. Heres some perspective: Were competing in an age where brands have become media companies to entertain the masses Organizations build free software tools to attract new prospects Companies like Proctor Gamble spend $4.6 billion yearly on advertising alone Thats the world you compete in - and your cross-functional team is smack-dab in the middle of it. So the big question is: Can your team seamlessly work together to get the job done? You can hammer nails with a brick, but its going to take a heck of a long time. Instead, you need a hammer. Something made exactly for the job. Its the same for us marketers How To Lead A Cross-Functional Team Collaboration With @You Need The Tool Built Specifically For The Job We often get stuck with tools built for  every use case rather than  our use case. is the tool built for modern marketers to manage  everything in one place. In this post, youre going to learn how to lead your cross-functional team to success using a tool built just for you: . âš’ No more using a mishmash of single-function tools its time for a platform built to suit. 📉 Sayonara to spreadsheets to manage your spreadsheets its time to transition every last detail into . 👋  Wave goodbye to endless meetings to finally get on the same page. (Only to have people ask, Whats going on again? 10 minutes later)   its time to get a birds-eye view of everyones deadlines. Its time to get a birds-eye view of your marketing teams deadlines with @What Problems Do Cross-Functional Teams Face? To start, lets outline the big problems cross-functional teams are up against. In a 2015 study, researchers found out that 75% of cross-functional teams weren’t actually all that functional. #irony Lead researcher, Behnam Tabrizi discovered these kinds of  teams were failing on several fronts: Meeting a planned budget. Staying on schedule. Adhering to specifications. Meeting customer expectations. Maintaining alignment corporate goals. What are the most common failure points for cross-functional marketing teams (and how canThese failures surprised me. After all, how can seemingly advanced teams of specialists miss things like budget, schedule, or goal alignment? Theyre project management 101. Tabrizi explained: Cross-functional teams often fail because the organization lacks a systemic approach. So, whats a cross-functional team lead to do? How Can Help You Lead Them? Enter . With , you have a systematic approach at your fingertips. Its built for keeping all of these plates spinning (so your brain doesnt have to): 🔠¥ marketing campaigns, 🔠¥ project management, 🔠¥ email marketing, 🔠¥ team workflows, 🔠¥ threaded conversations, 🔠¥ content creation, 🔠¥ file sharing, 🔠¥ social media, 🔠¥ and everything else the best marketing programs need managed. Now, here are two big ways these features will help you lead your cross-functional team to sweet marketing victory. Here are two big ways @will help you lead your cross-functional team to sweet marketingManage Multi-Teaming With One Source Of Truth Imagine youre in charge of managing all of your companys content. And youre responsible for launching a new product. This means: Email campaigns, Fresh website copy, Product positioning content, Sales decks, Case studies, Social media promo, Company blog posts, Landing pages, Etc Fortunately, you have a super savvy team made up of writers, editors, designers, a social media manager, and even a couple developers. And that team is also collaborating with other teams like sales, operations, and finance. The problem is, as one study found, is that 81% of those working on teams work on more than one concurrently. If you have 10 people, 8 of them are also working on other projects. This reality is called multi-teaming. And it means that every other team leader is clamoring for the time, attention, and expertise on their own projects. Every multi-teamed individual then gets pulled in opposite directions weekly - even daily. This is a real hurdle to cross-functional team success. And it can put every projects deadlines and deliverables in jeopardy. For instance, if your developer is also working on three other projects, what happens when a major fire starts elsewhere? They need to jump out of your project and into another because of the prioritized urgency. Really, then, your teams attention on your project looks more like this This puts your project at risk. But there is also the additional cost to productivity because on onboarding  and re-onboarding. Obviously, just because someone steps away from your project doesnt mean it stops. But while it moves forward, theyre out of the loop. This means theyre playing catch up when they finally step back in. The great news is can help tremendously. Struggling with cross-functional team collaboration? Heres how @can help tremendouslyUse As Your One Source Of Truth can help your team seamlessly re-onboard into your project by acting as your one source of truth. Im on the Demand Generation team, here. But I still collaborate on projects with our Brand Buzz, Product Marketing, Sales, and Dev teams every week. Im in-and-out of projects constantly. So, whenever I hop into the tool I get an overview of which campaigns I have projects and tasks in. Each tile in the image below represents an entire  marketing campaign. From this view, I can see: campaign owner, campaign duration, campaign title, my other team members, and the % completion. Then, when I click into the campaign itself, I see each of the projects that are part of it. This tile now represents a project Im the owner of. In this case, its core content for our #MakeshiftMarketing campaign. Then, within this project, I see all: âÅ"…  tasks, 📅  deadlines, ðŸâ€"“ publish dates, 🙋†Ã¢â„¢â‚¬Ã¯ ¸ Ã‚  conversations, 📄 creative briefs, ðŸâ€"‚  relevant files, 📈 and even analytics. Best of all, even if Ive been out of a project for awhile, I can see all of this without ever having to drop by anyones desk or send an IM. In this case, I can see that if I dont get my stuff done, Ben will be waiting on me. And because I like Ben, thats no good. Even better, once Ive marked an assigned task complete, the relevant person can get an approval notification. This way, they know its ready for review, approval, and the next person to start working. This system is invaluable for my multi-teamed compatriots and me. But how does this work outside of our teams? How does @connect marketing departments to other cross-functional teams?How Does This Work In The Real World? An excellent example of how this works in the real world is the story of customer Vega. Vega is a premium brand of plant-based lifestyle and performance nutrition products. And with a marketing team of 32 employees, they have tons of cross-collaborative campaigns and projects happening all at once. Before , they were stuck with project requests flooding their email inbox managing the deluge of details by hand and managing deadlines between teams and departments. As a growing company, this simply didnt work. Their teams need a birds-eye view of everything that was happening for real-time visibility into their marketing. Said their content marketing specialists, Elizabeth Jarrard: has saved me a ton of time in streamlining that process. And I have the ability to have a much higher view of what’s going out on all of Vega’s distribution points at any given time. When everyone has an accurate line of sight into whats happening, less time is spent in re-onboarding And more time is spent working. This proves especially true for multi-teamed employees in every organization. Said their content marketing manager, Amber Kennedy: [] makes conversations about last minute changes or projects a five minute chat, instead of an hour long meeting spent scratching our heads wondering how we’re going to make it work. Vegas diverse functional teams now have an incredible Vegas marketing team is hard at work building their audience and keeping current fans engaged. In addition to content that supports brand awareness campaigns, Vega’s content distribution includes organic and paid social media posts, editorial and promotional emails, educational webinars, and more. Basically, its a lot of smart people doing a lot of cool things getting great eCommerce results. Amber also says: My favorite feature is that everything is in one place. We open , run a saved calendar view, and have a conversation. It’s easier to collaborate and be on the same page. Takeaway: Use to mitigate the impact of multi-teaming, while maximizing the precious time each team member spends on your projects. #2. Drive Goals And Deadlines With Task Templates Imagine if your paycheck was dependent on your team hitting every goal. Nowhere to hide At the end of two weeks, the KPIs told the story of getting paid (or not). Thatd be rough for some of us. But, what if theres a simple way to increase your odds of succeeding by 4.3X? Obviously youd do it, right? Well, there is. According to our research, marketers who set goals are 429% more likely to report success than those who dont. A Harvard study found that setting goals: Increases motivation in individuals and groups. And increases achievement in nearly any setting. Your cross-functional team is no different. While setting goals is amazing, its not the same as achieving them. So, how do you parlay goal setting into the promised land of success? How can marketers parley goal setting into the promised land of success with @?Reverse Engineer Your Goals Into Tasks Attached To Deadlines Its time to reverse engineer your goals into tasks attached to firm deadlines. Reverse engineering your goals is pretty standard fare. If your goal is to increase qualified leads by 40%, you define the steps to get there. But imagine your cross-functional team has six people: Team lead (you) Designer Copywriter Editor Sales PPC manager Developer Where do you start? Probably with your standard bevy of spreadsheets and tools. Only, you  manage one process in tool X, another in tool Y, another in tool Z When you work with sales on a new deck, you use Basecamp to manage the workflow. This is because both your team and sales have access to the app. When you create blog posts, however, you use Asana to manage the process among your team because thats what your design team uses. And when you create email campaigns, you use Google Sheets. Even when there are similarities in your process (e.g. plan/write/design/edit/schedule), you have to spend time learning how to execute the process in new tools- not to mention, trying to remember where all this stuff lives. Use The Task-Simplification Framework An excellent remedy is a framework called task simplification. Former CEO of Intel, Andrew S. Grove, described it in his landmark book,  High Output Management. And its perfect for planning goal-driven marketing workflows. For each piece you’ll create (think blog post, e-book, landing page, etc.), run through these steps (head’s up- I’ve built upon Andrew’s original advice): Write out every task that needs to be done. Identify and delete the tasks that are unnecessary. Combine tasks together that will be completed at the same time. Delegate only one person to complete one task (e.g. don’t expect two people to complete one task). Assign a due date for each task as â€Å"{#} of days before publish†. This framework will help you  reduce the amount of work you take on by 30-50%. In addition, by setting clear task due dates, you know when to begin each piece to know when to realistically set deadlines. For example, when you know that blog post will take 22 days to produce, the soonest you can publish it is 23 days from today (if you were to start it today). That’s powerful info that will help you plan realistic deadlines and hit them.