With more and more businesses opting to continue to offer remote working options, great cross-team communication has simply become a necessity. So many companies nowadays choose to have a diverse team of employees who, more often than not, live in different parts of the country and the world, and this can sometimes affect your teams’ communication.
When it comes to creating great content for various digital channels, all teams should be focused on the same goal – working together to satisfy the target audience’s needs. Content production is much more than just mere writing, which usually involves the work and collaboration among several teams.
Although different teams can have a hard time organizing meetings, especially if they come from different time zones, with the right approach and tools, everyone can make it work. Let’s see what can be done to facilitate effective cross-team communication and content creation.
The Essence of Cross-team Communication
In many companies, cross-team communication represents a major, yet often overlooked aspect. Considering that most companies operate on several levels and employ a lot of teams, it’s important that all those people of different expertise and backgrounds find it natural to communicate with whomever they need to at any given moment.
Breaking barriers of communication between senior and junior employees, as well as between teams that usually don’t work together shows how company culture can indeed be aimed at improving inter-team communication, increasing productivity, and providing a greater final result. Making sure that all teams in a company communicate and collaborate on a project can be a potent activity, ultimately leading to major improvements and innovative solutions.
How to Boost Cross-team Communication
Most present-day companies have already realized how important it is to move past poor company culture and part ways with ineffective cross-team communication. Because of this, many company leaders have already started implementing various methods and techniques aimed at boosting cross-team relations. Without further ado, here are tips that can help with any possible dysfunctionality among teams, particularly when it comes to coming up with a great content strategy and generating engaging content.
Being a Good Leader
For any team to be successful, it has to have a good leader. Although most leaders are usually busy and can’t attend all meetings, they should always be available and visible to all team members. Thanks to their experience and knowledge of the company’s teams and employees, the leader should be able to establish good cross-team collaboration and delegate the tasks equally, ensuring that things run smoothly.
When it comes to content production, the company leader has to ensure that the content production team gets in touch with all other teams that can help with creating the best possible content including designers, outreach specialists, editors, proofreaders, etc.
Setting Expectations
Once the teams have been connected and learned more about each other, setting expectations seems like the next logical step. To be able to meet all the objectives, certain things should be set beforehand. These include specific project goals and expectations, individual roles and tasks, budget and resources, as well as schedule.
Of course, to ensure better communication and collaboration, all team members should agree on the same set of expectations. This way, teams collaborating on the same project can easily adapt to the way of doing things and ensure everyone is on the same page.
Ensuring Clear Communication
What can negatively impact cross-team relations is not getting your message across. When several teams are working together on a certain project, they can easily get lost in their thoughts and words, especially if they’re accustomed to working in different ways and by implementing diverse methods and techniques.
To maintain the teams’ productivity, it’s essential to make sure that everyone has read and understood the requirements, goals, instructions, etc. If everyone knows what their task is and what they should do, there will be little room for miscommunication and making mistakes.
Using the Necessary Online Collaboration Tools
Remote work has completely changed the way people work and communicate. With more and more people working from home and rarely visiting the office, using online collaboration tools has become a must. Team collaboration tools and apps have been invented to ensure easier and quicker communication among teams and team members, particularly when they are working in different parts of the world.
For example, Pumble is a team chat and collaboration app that can keep employees connected, ensure face-to-face communication, and provide simple workspace administration, to name just a few. Instant messaging, video calls and file sharing are especially convenient for content production teams, as they provide flexibility and ensure quick responses when necessary. Obviously, there are also robust, dedicated content marketing platforms like DivvyHQ that are specifically designed to facilitate content collaboration across multiple content, marketing, and communications teams.
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Acknowledging Achievements
Collaboration always has its ups and downs, but that shouldn’t discourage teams from further working together. However, team members should get used to recognizing and celebrating their efforts and success. As each team member achieves certain milestones, it’s essential that other team members recognize and praise their success. This will, for sure, boost morale, improve cross-team communication, and keep the whole group motivated.
Benefits of Good Cross-team Communication
With most present-day teams working from different parts of the globe, it can sometimes be hard to ensure effective communication among teams. However, there are ways to ensure better cross-team communication and enjoy its numerous benefits.
Sharing Perspectives and Ideas
With many people from different departments working on one project, everyone will have their own understanding of the problems and possible solutions. With this many ideas, approaches, and perspectives, teams can come up with better, more effective solutions that would apply to everyone involved in the project. With this way of getting things done, every team will have a say, covering all concerns and ensuring a bunch of fresh ideas and strategies are used to get the best outcomes.
Exchanging Knowledge and Experiences
Another great thing that comes along with cross-team collaboration is the exchange of knowledge and experiences. When it comes to delivering great content, sometimes it’s important to be able to hear others and see things from their point of view. Sharing knowledge, ideas and experiences can help people of different backgrounds see a bigger picture and even learn more about what other colleagues in the company do. With effective cross-team communication, team members can establish stronger and better relationships.
Achieving Goals
Entire companies can benefit from cross-team collaboration. Once teams have learned more about how other teams work and function, it can be much easier to get things done, productivity can be boosted, and making mistakes can be reduced to a minimum. It’s in the company’s interest that projects are finished quickly and with the best possible outcomes, and thanks to effective cross-team communication, this is no longer an obstacle.
Challenges That Occur with Cross-team Communication
Although cross-team communication has numerous benefits, it also has its disadvantages. Of course, these won’t happen in every company and with every team, but it’s better to be informed and prepared. Here are some of the things different teams can face when working together:
Staying on Schedule
To ensure success, it’s important to keep in mind that everyone has their own tasks, responsibilities, deadlines, and goals. This means that besides working together on one project, each team or team member may still have to work on their own tasks and projects. Creating a detailed content calendar and delegating tasks are necessary for a cross-functional team to achieve goals and stay on track.
Meeting the Budget
Staying on budget can also be another challenge when collaborating with other teams. Considering that each team has its own projects and budgets to take care of, it can sometimes be difficult to work on a mutual project and remain within the set budget.
Wrapping Up
Cross-team collaboration has become one of the most important traits of present-day businesses, especially when it comes to delivering great content to the target audience. Companies are now more focused on ensuring that their teams can work together on the same project and achieve great results. The benefits of different teams working together are numerous, however, one should always be aware of the potential challenges as well. By employing certain methods, techniques, and tools to boost cross-team communication, companies across the globe can overcome the challenges and make sure that the message gets across successfully.
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