Driving High-Velocity Cross-Functional Collaboration

Yet cross-functional collaboration doesn’t happen naturally.
Misalignment, siloed goals, and unclear accountability can slow progress, dilute impact, and frustrate teams. Before defining what great collaboration looks like, it’s important to understand its fundamentals, benefits, and common challenges.

What cross-functional collaboration really means?

Cross-functional collaboration simply means people from different functions working toward a shared objective. In practice, this requires more than cooperation—it requires a shared definition of success, collective responsibility for outcomes, and transparency into progress and risks.

When teams collaborate cross-functionally effectively, organizations benefit from:

Clearer, faster communication

Teams share context and stay aligned on what matters most.

Higher innovation and better solutions

Diverse perspectives lead to insights a single team could never generate in isolation.

Knowledge sharing and greater expertise

People gain visibility into how different teams work, which strengthens judgment and teamwork.

Streamlined execution

Teams avoid duplicate work, identify blockers faster, and move with greater operational clarity.

More inclusion and engagement

Shared outcomes create trust and reduce the tension that comes from siloed decision-making.

Where cross-functional collaboration breaks down?

Despite its importance, cross-functional collaboration often struggles because:

• Ownership is unclear — no one knows who is accountable for outcomes.
• Teams have conflicting goals — priorities diverge or compete.
• Information stays siloed — people lack visibility into upstream or downstream work.
• There are no shared metrics — each team uses its own definitions of success.
• Remote work creates distance — communication becomes fragmented or inconsistent.

These are not people problems; they are system problems.
And they require a better system for alignment, transparency, and execution.

This is where OKRs—and later, execution boards—become essential.

Using OKRs with cross-functional teams

In Nigel Stacey’s recent blog for Accenture, Together Makes Better: How to Drive Cross-Function Collaboration, he emphasizes that focusing on cross-functional collaboration can help companies further digitize in times of shaky supply chains and sluggish demand:

“Even in “normal” times, a lack of collaboration on complex challenges like digital transformation can cost organizations ROI and future revenue growth. In the time of COVID-19 and economic downturn, the age-old silos problem could be disastrous.”

Forming teams across functional lines help companies stay relevant, innovate, and drive more profitable growth through collaboration than those that remain siloed. OKRs are a perfect methodology for keeping cross-functional teams aligned, focused, and moving toward results, especially in the current remote work model.

To realize their full benefit, a scalable approach to OKRs is necessary, including expertise to master the methodology, technology to show alignment, risks, and progress, and the coaching necessary to guide and develop quarterly organizational improvement.

5 benefits of OKRs for cross-functional teams

OKRs provide a common framework and quarterly process for teams to articulate and align what they want to achieve, focus efforts on measurable outcomes, and iteratively learn with data over time. For cross-functional teams, these capabilities hold each contributor accountable for delivering the outcomes that drive a company's strategic priorities from anywhere, anytime.

In fact, OKRs:

1. Help cross-functional teams outperform functional teams

‍OKRs using WorkBoard fuel successful collaboration across teams. At Workday, cross-functional teams outperform their silod counterparts: “OKRs have helped us concentrate forces and align around those things that matter most, helping each of us maintain a level of accountability in what we commit to, and how we now practice that in the rhythm of our business. I absolutely believe OKRs have enabled our teams to operate better and enabled us to operate as a stronger organization.” - Greg Pryor, Senior VP, People & Performance Evangelist

2. Align stakeholders and keep them in sync on facts and accountability

‍OKRs on WorkBoard align both laterally and vertically across the organization. For Malwarebytes, “OKRs bring us the breadth, focus, and transparency that ensures alignment in an area otherwise difficult to align. We found OKRs to be super valuable as a cross-functional team.” - Greg Higham, CIO

4. Reveal dependencies between cross-functional team

‍When working in siloes, it’s common for teams to perform redundant or cross-purpose work. For Zuora, the transparency of OKRs brought awareness to those dependencies: “Rather than a hierarchical structure, we wanted the company to be thought of as a set of teams where everyone is part of one or two or more teams. And we want the teams to be semi-autonomous and executing the goals that they have, but also recognizing there’s a lot of dependencies between teams. Especially as we grow as an organization.” - Tien Tzuo, CEO

5. Boost autonomy and empower execution for members of cross-functional teams

‍OKRs enable cross-functional teams to clarify what they want to achieve and how success is measured. Working groups, pods, and squads can be more self-directed, aligned, and accountable. For Cisco, “The framework of OKRs is creating an environment for our teams to have conversations that they wouldn't have been having otherwise.” - Anna Birch, Chief of Staff, Cisco

6. Create a shared consciousness for cross-functional teams

‍Employees need the ability to make progress and good decisions independently. Clarity on intended outcomes and transparency on commitments, actions, and decisions helps inter-dependent colleagues be effective asynchronously. At IBM, “It’s key that everybody knows what other leaders’ and teams’ priorities are. The visibility and transparency of OKRs are crucial, so you don't have to rely on meetings and one-on-one conversations to understand what matters.” - Sarah Davis, Director of Portfolio Programs - Data and AI

These companies paired OKRs with proper technology infrastructure, expertise, and coaching to realize their full potential and best possible outcomes.

Drive results with agility

As Nigel writes, “even in ‘normal’ times, the lack of cross-functional collaboration costs organizations ROI and revenue growth. In the time of economic downturn, cross-function competition—especially on matters concerning digital transformation—could be disastrous.”

Many companies create cross-functional teams that set OKRs for a line of business, product, or product family. These teams might include PMs, the revenue lead, the CX lead, and Dev team leads. For those teams to stay focused and succeed, they need a scalable and simple management framework; they need a powerful alignment that helps stakeholders stay in sync on the facts and accountable to each other — they need OKRs. When powered by a platform and the consulting and coaching necessary to see results with it in the first quarter, OKRs are a force multiplier for any company.

How to visualize and automate strategy-aligned work

A strategy is only as good as its execution and teams that execute their strategic initiatives at high velocity are more fun to be on! Only WorkBoardAI platform unites strategy and execution seamlessly to enable data-driven, agile teams to define, measure and execute their strategic priorities in fast sprints. Now, here is how we have enhanced Kanban and collaboration boards to make high-value work much easier to visualize and act upon:

1. Personalized boards to distinguish the work and the team
2. Automated the flow of work and communication to reduce administrative steps
3. Boards of actions, images, projects, people and more to manage it all

A great strategy needs a great plan of action or it’s just dust in the wind

Move from ambitious strategy to fast and effective execution with collaboration boards. Organize, visualize and automate more of your strategy-aligned work. Here are just a few ways customers are putting their strategies in motion and crushing it:

Customer Renewals Board Most software companies have a strategic priority to reduce churn, but lack visibility to the discrete accounts and the work required to maintain each of those accounts as clients. Manage account or subscription renewals with columns for likely to churn, at risk and ready to renew with stop light colors for each. Automate status changes and hand offs by simply dragging an account across different statuses. Finally, update your key results to showcase percentage of accounts renewed on your WorkBoard Business Review.

Journey and Value Maps: Developing personas, articulating their respective value and ensuring it’s embedded across marketing messages, sales training, customer onboarding, and product roadmaps is a strategic priority for all product companies — but it’s inevitably challenging to orchestrate that process cross functionally. Lay out the sequence of work with clear ownership across teams and personnel, tie it to your strategic priorities and let the work flow.

Content Approvals: Innovative companies make it a strategic priority to position differentiated value in on-point content to the right audiences at the right time. Move from content draft to production faster by automating hand offs in the process. Create a flow from ideation, copy, creative, review, iteration and publication with seamless hand offs. Streamline the content-creation process, avoid missed deadlines and confusion on status and ownership.

Values Board: "Living the values" is how companies and teams meet their own expectations. Create a visual board illustrating your organization's values so everyone has them line of sight every day; align the values board with an individual "Live the values" objective for each team member, and it will automatically be on the agenda of your 1on1s in WorkBoard.

Getting the right people on the team a strategic priority? Use a people board to drive the hiring and onboarding flow. Launching a new solution? Use an action board with automation to trigger alerts and sequence work across functional teams. Connect transparent strategic priorities with clear metrics for success with a shared plan of action to make a bigger impact.