How fast can you establish Cross-Functions Team (CFT) with talented people?
How do we feel about customer’s problems (especially, top profitable ones)?
What (not who) is the root cause of the problems?
How can we solve the problems?
Cross-Functions Team must consist of talented people who know and understand clearly what day-to-day operations have been perform in the reality (not in a book or Standard Operating Procedure). Top management can be included as motivator and driver of the team, but should be limited to only a few, because they usually knows things in the book, but not the level that the customers experience. Normally, when people from different functions are put together to solve a problem, there will definitely be so-called “Finger Pointing“. Usually, this will drag the discussion away from “Solution” and running into “Conflict” in amazing speed. If the cross-functions team was not properly formed, for example, some ones or some departments are missing, but involve in the problem somehow, the missing one would most-likely to be pointed to end the discussion. Yet, the problem is still unsolved, solution is never come out.
Then, when we analyze customer’s problems, we should evaluate the feeling of the CFT toward the problem. This could be based on number of customers who complaint about the same problem, comparison to competitors and vision of the company. Some problems may be just because this customer is too demanding to be satisfied, however, it has to be trade-off with profit that such customer is generating. From considering these factors, the CFT will be able to adjust their own feeling, could probably caused by emotion, toward the group feeling, which would be more realistic and accurate to be used to create the best solution, which optimize profit and maintain sustainable growth.
Posted by zenicism 