Building Cross-Functional Teams For Strategic Change

It feels natural to put your function first. It’s also what holds organizations back. Leaders invest deeply in the teams that report to them—coaching, advocating, delivering wins. But they often overlook the team they lead with. Here’s the shift that separates good managers from enterprise leaders: → Your peer leadership team is your first team → Your function is your second This isn’t about abandoning your function. It’s about realizing you serve it better when you act in the best interest of the whole business. And this mindset isn’t reserved for execs. If you lead people, it applies to you. So why do so many leaders default to function-first? Because it’s where they came up. It’s where they feel most accountable. It’s where wins—and promotions—tend to show up on paper. But function-first thinking creates ripple effects: → Turf battles → Conflicting priorities → Slower collaboration → Fragmented trust First-team leadership flips that: → Shared ownership → Aligned decisions → Real execution power How do you make the shift? → Redefine success. Don’t just track your function’s wins. Ask: Did we help move the company forward this week? → Share context. Help your team see the pressures and priorities across functions—not just their own. → Model trade-offs. Make your cross-functional decisions visible—especially when they benefit the company more than your department. If you lead a team of leaders, make sure your incentives support the culture you want. People follow incentives, even when you say otherwise. You can’t say “collaborate” and reward silo wins. To reinforce a first-team culture: → Tie part of bonuses or MBOs to shared leadership outcomes → Recognize integrators, not just individual performers → Make it easier to collaborate than compete (tools, meetings, forums) Then layer in behavior: → Shared goals → Cross-functional accountability → Regular reflection: What did we do this week to help the business—not just our team—succeed? When your leaders start acting like stewards of the business—not just heads of functions—alignment, execution, and trust all get easier. The org stops behaving like a collection of departments. It starts operating as a team of teams. Want to try this? Open your next leadership meeting with this question: “If we were truly operating as a first team, what would we do differently today?” Watch how quickly the conversation shifts. #Leadership #Execution #TeamOfTeams #OrgDesign #CrossFunctional #FirstTeamMindset

Scaling from 50 to 100 employees almost killed our company. Until we discovered a simple org structure that unlocked $100M+ in annual revenue. In my 10+ years of experience as a founder, one of the biggest challenges I faced in scaling was bridging the organizational gap between startup and enterprise. We hit that wall at around 100~ employees. What worked beautifully with a small team suddenly became our biggest obstacle to growth. The problem was our functional org structure: Engineers reporting to engineering, product to product, business to business. This created a complex dependency web: • Planning took weeks • No clear ownership  • Business threw Jira tickets over the fence and prayed for them to get completed • Engineers didn’t understand priorities and worked on problems that didn’t align with customer needs That was when I studied Amazon's Single-Threaded Owner (STO) model, in which dedicated GMs run independent business units with their own cross-functional teams and manage P&L It looked great for Amazon's scale but felt impossible for growing companies like ours. These 2 critical barriers made it impractical for our scale: 1. Engineering Squad Requirements: True STO demands complete engineering teams (including managers) reporting to a single owner. At our size, we couldn't justify full engineering squads for each business unit. To make it work, we would have to quadruple our engineering headcount. 2. P&L Owner Complexity: STO leaders need unicorn-level skills: deep business acumen and P&L management experience. Not only are these leaders rare and expensive, but requiring all these skills in one person would have limited our talent pool and slowed our ability to launch new initiatives. What we needed was a model that captured STO's focus and accountability but worked for our size and growth needs. That's when we created Mission-Aligned Teams (MATs), a hybrid model that changed our execution (for good) Key principles: • Each team owns a specific mission (e.g., improving customer service, optimizing payment flow) • Teams are cross-functional and self-sufficient,  • Leaders can be anyone (engineer, PM, marketer) who's good at execution • People still report functionally for career development • Leaders focus on execution, not people management The results exceeded our highest expectations: New MAT leads launched new products, each generating $5-10M in revenue within a year with under 10 person teams. Planning became streamlined. Ownership became clear. But it's NOT for everyone (like STO wasn’t for us) If you're under 50 people, the overhead probably isn't worth it. If you're Amazon-scale, pure STO might be better. MAT works best in the messy middle: when you're too big for everyone to be in one room but too small for a full enterprise structure. image courtesy of Manu Cornet ------ If you liked this, follow me Henry Shi as I share insights from my journey of building and scaling a  $1B/year business.

A common partnership snafu is that companies want partnership success, but don’t provide the resources to get there. I heard of a case where a whole marketing team quit, the partnerships team was given no marketing support, and they didn't yet have an integration with product -- and yet, the CEO expected the partnership strategy to deliver instant revenue. Wild. But not uncommon. Partnerships can't thrive in a vacuum. They need cross-functional support—marketing, product integration, sales enablement—all aligned to succeed. Before you set revenue targets for your partnerships, ask yourself: Do we have the resources to support them? If the answer is no, you have to help your leadership teams to reconsider their expectations. To help create the cross-functional support needed for partnerships to thrive, here are four strategies: 1. Involve Cross-Functional Leaders from the Very Beginning Bring key leaders from marketing, sales, and product into the partnership planning phase. Early involvement gives them a sense of ownership and ensures they understand how partnerships align with their own goals. Strategy: Schedule a kick-off meeting with stakeholders from each relevant department. Create a shared roadmap that outlines how partnerships will impact each team and their specific contributions. 2. Tie Partnership Success to Department KPIs To gain buy-in, tie partnership goals directly to the KPIs of each department. Aligning partnership outcomes with what each team is measured on ensures they have skin in the game. Strategy: During planning sessions, ask each department head how partnerships can contribute to their targets. Build specific KPIs for each function into the overall partnership strategy. 3. Create a Resource Exchange Agreement Formalize the support needed from each department with a resource exchange agreement. This sets clear expectations on what each function will contribute—whether it's a dedicated product team member for integrations or marketing resources for co-branded campaigns. It turns vague promises into commitments. Strategy: Draft a simple document that outlines the roles, responsibilities, and deliverables each team will provide, then get sign-off from department heads and the executive team. 4. Demonstrate Early Wins for Buy-In Quick wins go a long way toward securing ongoing resources. Identify a small pilot project with an internal team that shows immediate impact. Whether it's a small co-marketing campaign or a limited integration, these early successes build momentum and demonstrate the value of supporting partnerships. Strategy: Select one or two partners to run a pilot with, focused on delivering measurable outcomes like leads generated or product adoption. Use this success story to demonstrate value to other departments and secure further commitment. Partnership success requires cross-functional alignment. Because partnerships don’t happen in a silo.

Strategy isn’t a slide. It’s a fight worth having. I’ve been quiet here for a day because I just came out of two intense, energizing sessions with our extended strategy team. And I’m still fired up. 💥 We pushed each other hard. We challenged assumptions. We laughed a lot. And we left with crystal-clear alignment and a shared determination to think bigger, move faster, and win as one team. Our focus: ✅ Think Big, Go Fast Not in months and quarters. In days and weeks. ✅ Win Every Key Moment in the Customer Journey Especially the ones that define value and long-term loyalty. ✅ Win as One Team Not your team, not my team. Our team. Rooted in shared goals, not personal preferences. For some reason, I usually get to help moderate these sessions. That’s no small task with 25 to 30 strong leaders in the room from every department. But it gives me a front-row seat into how we build alignment that lasts. Here’s what works for us and might work for you: 1️⃣ Be clear up front Why are we meeting? What are the most important objectives? And how exactly are we going to win together? Set the tone early. Remove ambiguity. Drive purpose. 2️⃣ Bring the voice of the customer into the room 🎤 The most substantial alignment starts with empathy and clarity around what matters most to our customers. When we anchor the conversation in value needed and delivered, priorities become clearer and conflict becomes productive. Customer insights create unity. 3️⃣ Make cross-functional ownership real 🤝 Everyone says “we’re one team.” But real alignment means we walk out with shared KPIs, not siloed tasks. Product, Sales, CS, Ops, we all succeed only when we move together. 💬 So here's my call to action for you today: If you’re leading in CS, CX, Product, or Revenue, and you’re halfway through Q3, ask yourself: Are you chasing alignment? Or are you building it through purpose, participation, and shared accountability? The next level doesn’t arrive by accident. We create it. Together. #CreateTheFuture #LeadershipInAction #CustomerSuccess #StrategyExecution #CrossFunctionalAlignment #OneTeamOneMission #Q3Momentum