How Cross-Functional, Multidisciplinary Teams Can Help You Survive a Recession

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Each week seems to bring bad news about the state of the global economy and its impact on the tech sector. We seem well on our way to a downturn. Each startup will experience this recession differently. Some, especially those in spaces such as SaaS, can get away relatively unscathed. Others, like certain e-commerce and fast-delivery sectors, look set to have a tougher time. What any prudent founder will consider is how their startup can best weather the storm and prepare for success when things inevitably improve.

The most obvious approach is to reduce costs and increase efficiency. A no-brainer - but something much easier to talk about than to put into practice effectively. Inevitably, many startups first consider downsizing to achieve this goal. However, more often than not, it does far more harm than good. Vital skills and knowledge are lost, morale is affected and customer service suffers.

Instead, the answer could be found in changing team structures, processes and approaches. Change that maximizes efficiency and resilience and fosters innovation. I'm talking about the magic of cross-functional, multidisciplinary teams.

This is probably a record moment where you look confused and wonder why I started writing as a management consultant. Listen to me. While this may sound like a load of random jargon, it actually describes one of the best future trading structures.

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register here Multidisciplinary teams: Breaking down silos

Generally, companies are divided into departments. Marketers sit with marketers and developers huddle with other developers. Marketing is in charge of marketing, the development team is in charge of development. It's nice and simple and has a lot of obvious benefits. Unfortunately, it also has some glaring problems that are becoming increasingly apparent as technology, changing work practices, and rising customer expectations increase the complexity of what many businesses do. I'll give a few examples below, but they can be summarized as knowledge silos - usually around data, and causing bottlenecks, single points of failure, and reduced innovation.

Multidisciplinary teams are, as their name suggests, departments made up of people with a wide range of skills. Cross-functional means that responsibilities, knowledge, and goals extend across the enterprise.

Let's focus on marketing. The way businesses communicate has become incredibly complex - more channels, more tools, digital transformation, an unprecedented amount of data and higher expectations. Websites are expected to offer a host of personalized experiences. All of this requires a lot of skills working in tandem: data science, security, IT, digital marketing, copywriting, customer service, development, and more.

Collaboration, not conflict

Juggling all these different skills found in different departments with different goals leads to a lot of headaches and, in some cases, conflict. Marketers ask developers to perform an action immediately, but it falls to the end of the queue because developers have their own priorities. Data scientists provide insights that don't include the business insights marketers need for their strategies. Everyone forgets to tell customer service about new marketing campaign copy. And so ...