Cross-pollination as a strategic advantage for forward-thinking organizations
Encouraging fresh thinking and innovation is essential as organizations navigate the challenges of sustained growth. In order to create a culture of innovation, teams need to be able to share their knowledge across teams and departments. Cross-pollinating ideas creates a more engaged workforce and allows teams to think outside the box.
“[Cross-pollination] keeps people excited and motivated because they feel that, yes, we’re also learning something. We’re making an impression in a new area. We’re working on a new team,” Anirudh Kaul, Senior Director, Software Engineering at U.S. Bank, shared during the latest episode of Leaders of Code.
This article will explore the concept of cross-pollination—the process of exposing team members to new ways of thinking by sharing knowledge, through processes like cross-functional teams, mentorship programs, and knowledge-sharing digital platforms—as a crucial strategy for fostering innovation within organizations.
When companies face stagnation from an inability to innovate, it can be difficult to inject new ideas into teams. Often, teams rely on their typical ways of doing things, creating echo chambers and blind spots.
Without intentional work by leaders, teams can become siloed quickly. This is especially true when routine work keeps teams busy, causing them to fall into ruts built around repetitive tasks. “I would say it’s challenging because if teams are busy doing a lot of things that are routine for them, they’re not going to make time for the innovation,” Paul Petersen, Manager of Cloud Platform Engineering at U.S. Bank shared while on Leaders of Code.
These issues are amplified when short-term cost cutting measures inadvertently lead companies into becoming anti-innovation, with initiatives that further push teams away from new ideas and towards the same daily work, according to an article in Forbes. When teams become stuck in their ways, they are unable to see beyond the work in front of them. They lose the necessary context of other departments and the company.
When teams are able to connect with one another, the result is more innovation and a deeper sense of engagement amongst teams. This deeper understanding allows for quicker adoption of ideas and tools, as employees are aware of the full context behind decisions, making the “why” is clear across the company. Employees are able to see how other teams are productively and efficiently integrating these ideas and tools, and pathways for adoption that were previously unknown to certain teams are made more apparent.
This deeper connection between teams creates ripple effects across the organization. Individual contributors have a heightened sense of purpose and a better understanding of how their work fits into the bigger picture of the company. They feel more engaged and valued for what they contribute to business goals. For leaders, the benefit is a more holistic view of company challenges and strengths, a path toward a more agile, collaborative workforce.
Cross-pollination cannot be forced, and needs to go beyond just having teams work on projects together. Employees need to feel psychologically safe within the organization, empowered them to share new ideas and ask questions of others. This begins with leadership nurturing a culture of trust and autonomy on their teams. “Let’s not tell them how to do everything. Let’s not dictate all the methods. Let’s let them explore and carve that time out to do those things,” Paul Petersen said on Leaders of Code, “you give them the permission to not [just] succeed, but try.”
Beyond just giving trust to individual contributors, leaders also need to be transparent and hold themselves accountable for mistakes and challenges. In cultures of innovation and adaptability, new ideas are not always right for the wider organization. Because of this, leaders need to build upon honesty, sharing when their goals have fallen short or when unexpected consequences occur during their strategy work.
“As we look at new ways to innovate and empower teams and we shift the way we work, sometimes we’re asking the teams to change how they work and we have certain expectations of them,” Jody Bailey, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Stack Overflow, explains on Leaders of Code, “But oftentimes, the changes are new to leadership too. And we don’t always get it right the first time. And one of the things that I’ve seen be really important for us as leaders is to be fairly transparent and honest about, yeah, we made a mistake here and we’re going to work with you and adapt and we’re learning together.”
In another piece, Forbes recommends that leadership overcome confirmation bias when creating strategy. Combined with transparency around decisions and mistakes, this helps to facilitate more honest conversations about the challenges at the company, allowing for new ideas to blossom both at the leadership level and amongst individual contributors.
Cross-pollination takes intentional strategy to be successful. One key way to naturally facilitate cross-pollination is to create cross-functional teams, allowing various departments to collaborate on projects and lend their expertise to products and initiatives. In fact, Entrepreneur recommends creating a renaissance culture, where team members are encouraged to pursue their passions and given opportunities to use skills outside of their main line of work through cross-functional project collaboration. This may look like giving a coder with an interest in visual arts a chance to work on UI design, fostering a deeper diversity of thought.
Another strategy for cross-pollination is through continuous learning strategies, such as job shadowing and internal mentorship programs. Both of these kinds of learning strategies allow for connections between various departments, as well as various seniority positions, helping to provide new outlooks and contexts to those participating. Creating visibility cross-departmentally through lunch and learn sessions, where teams share their challenges and successes with the rest of the company, can also help provide important context to different teams.
Forbes also recommends embracing technology as a way to allow for easy cross-pollination. Platforms like Slack open up communication channels across the company for in-the-moment collaboration or idea sharing, while Stack Overflow for Teams supports knowledge sharing and curiosity, giving teams an easy way to ask questions and learn from experts across the company.
Finally, it’s important to build these solutions alongside team members, connecting the goals of one department with those of another to create a virtuous cycle of cross-pollination and collaboration. Buy-in across teams and an understanding of the “why” are both necessary for a truly connected, engaged, and cross-pollinated ecosystem of departments, full of employees who feel empowered to innovate and be curious.
