Fixing cross-functional friction

by

Fixing cross-
functional friction

Aligning cross-functional site leadership teams to improve coordination and decision-making

Global Infrastructure Organisation (1,000+ employees)

#Teams

Fixing cross-functional friction

Aligning cross-functional site leadership teams to improve coordination and decision-making

Global Infrastructure Organisation (1,000+ employees)

#Teams

Context

A global infrastructure organisation operated multiple large-scale sites across Europe, each with its own cross-functional leadership team. These teams were responsible for the day-to-day performance of their sites, working across operations, engineering, and support functions.

The Challenge

Each site leadership team was made up of senior leaders who did not report to one another, but were required to collaborate closely.

Differences in priorities, ways of working, and functional influence often led to friction, slowing decision-making and creating unnecessary escalation to senior leadership.

At the same time, each site faced unique local challenges and needed to represent these effectively back to the wider organisation.

Without alignment, teams were seen as fragmented and reactive, often raising problems rather than presenting coordinated solutions.

Our Approach

We worked with the site leadership teams to strengthen alignment, collaboration, and collective ownership.

The focus was not on solving individual issues, but on improving how the teams worked together to solve them.

This included creating clearer mechanisms for surfacing and prioritising issues, making decisions collectively, escalating the right challenges at the right level, and representing a unified perspective back to the wider organisation.

Alongside this, we focused on building trust and encouraging more constructive challenge, helping leaders move beyond functional perspectives to a more integrated, site-level view.

What Changed

Teams became more aligned in how they approached problems, with greater coordination and fewer unnecessary escalations.

More issues were resolved at a local level, improving operational flow.

When escalation was required, it was more structured and solution-oriented, with clearer articulation of needs and trade-offs.

The teams were increasingly seen as collaborative, proactive, and capable of operating as a unified leadership group.

Why It Worked

The focus was on improving how the teams operated, rather than solving issues for them.

By introducing simple, practical ways of working, teams were able to handle complexity more effectively without adding unnecessary layers.

Building trust and shared ownership enabled leaders to move from representing functions to acting in the best interests of the site as a whole.

Further Reading

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