YoStella: Build a Better Business - Inspiration for Improving Your Brand, Marketing & People
Each year on Fat Tuesday, New Orleans throws a “Stella and Stanley” party. This annual event honors local boy and world-famous author Tennessee Williams and his masterpiece, A Streetcar Named Desire.
The movie version is notorious for the scene where Stanley, Marlon Brando in a tight white vest, yells “Stella-a-a-a-a-!” up the tenement stairs to his wife. “Stella” might be the most repeated movie line ever and Brando never needed to act again except, he said, for the money. Like a legendary actor, businesses need to cultivate their craft: building an amazing brand, elevating creativity, and growing authentic connections.
At StellaPop, we believe every business has a masterpiece in them.
YoStella: Build a Better Business - Inspiration for Improving Your Brand, Marketing & People
Cross-Functional Thinking: The Key to Solving Your Business's Real Problems
Bonus episode drops tomorrow morning on the StellaPop podcast. 🎤🎙️
The critical importance of cross-functional thinking for businesses to thrive in 2025 and beyond.
Cross-functional thinking defines this concept as understanding a business not as separate departments, but as an interconnected ecosystem where every decision impacts the whole.
The podcast explores how this approach enhances agility, prevents duplicated efforts, identifies inefficiencies, and aligns departments toward shared business outcomes. The podcast offers practical strategies for clients to foster cross-functional thinking, including aligning on shared business goals, forming cross-functional project teams, enhancing internal communication systems, and cultivating a mindset of curiosity about broader business impacts.
Ultimately, #StellaPop helps businesses implement these strategies by integrating executive insight with creative solutions, leading to more resilient and effective operations.
Welcome to the Deep Dive. You've probably heard the buzzword cross-functional everywhere. Right, it's almost standard talk in boardrooms now, but you have to wonder does it actually do anything? Or is it just, you know, one of those nice ideas people agree on in meetings and then nothing really changes Back to the same old silos? So today we want to cut through all that noise. We're using insights from this really great article. It's Everyone's Problem to Solve why Cross-Functional Thinking Matters. We're using insights from this really great article. It's Everyone's Problem to Solve why Cross-Functional Thinking Matters. We're going to unpack what it really means, why it's not just some trend but pretty fundamental for building businesses that can innovate and adapt, especially now in 2025. And, crucially, how you can actually put it into practice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, our goal here for you is really to get past just hearing the term. We want you to understand why, seeing your organization or, honestly, even your own projects as this interconnected system, why that's just essential for real growth, seeing how it all fits together, Okay, let's dive right in then.
Speaker 1:We talk about cross-functional a lot, but the article makes a key point. It's not just about breaking down walls between departments, is it? What's the real shift? And, maybe just as important, what is it not?
Speaker 2:That's a perfect place to start, because the article is clear True cross -functional thinking. It's not just tearing down silos, it's a deeper shift. It's moving away from seeing departments as these separate units with their own goals. Instead, you start seeing the whole company as one single ecosystem, where every little decision, every team's KPI actually sends ripples through the whole thing. And what it's definitely not this is really key is everyone suddenly trying to do everyone else's job. That's just chaos.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, that's a common mistake. Leads nowhere useful.
Speaker 2:Exactly. It's not about blurring skills, it's about connecting them.
Speaker 1:That makes sense. So, to really pin it down, it's about thinking beyond just your own tasks, your own team. It's about proactively looking for how your work depends on others and how their work depends on you, and then working together knowing you're aiming for the same big company goals Precise. The article really stresses this. It's strategic thinking, it's systems thinking and it's just essential today. Okay so if that's the what, then the big question is the why. Why now? Why is this so critical, especially in 2025? What's changed?
Speaker 2:Well, the landscape, as the source highlights it's shifted dramatically. Change isn't something on the horizon, it's here. Now You've got new tech like AI, changing everything. Customer expectations are constantly evolving. They want seamless experiences right and the lines between jobs. They're getting blurrier all the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, things are moving fast.
Speaker 2:Super fast.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So businesses that want to thrive, they need to be quick, they need to make smart, informed decisions, and that means getting everyone, literally from the top leadership to the front line, aligned on the same vision. It's about survival, really, and staying competitive.
Speaker 1:And the article points to some really tangible benefits when you actually do this. It's not just about feeling more collaborative. There are real games like increased agility. Better communication means fewer bottlenecks, faster movement.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Things just flow better.
Speaker 1:And it stops different teams accidentally doing the same work, which you know happens all the time. That's a huge waste.
Speaker 2:A huge waste of resources. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Plus, it helps uncover hidden inefficiencies in how things operate internally, things you might not even see from inside your own silo.
Speaker 2:Exactly. And maybe the biggest thing is that it shifts the focus. Instead of just hitting departmental targets, everyone starts working towards the overall customer experience, the actual business outcomes. It aligns everyone.
Speaker 1:Okay, let's make this really concrete. The article uses a great example, something probably a lot of us have seen Customer churn. So picture this A company sees churn is up, leadership looks at it and thinks I must be marketing, they're not doing a good enough job.
Speaker 2:Happens all the time.
Speaker 1:Right. So they tell the marketing team go fix this, Launch a win back campaign. Seems logical on the surface. Seems logical on the surface.
Speaker 2:Yeah, surface level logic. But here's what happens with that siloed thinking Marketing runs, the campaign spends the budget and churn doesn't budge. Nothing changes Because the real problem had nothing to do with marketing messages. It was buried somewhere else. In this case, the article points out it was an issue with customer onboarding. A bottleneck. There was frustrating people right at the start.
Speaker 1:Within the first couple of weeks, Ah, so they were leaving before any marketing campaign could even reach them effectively.
Speaker 2:Exactly. No amount of clever marketing could fix a broken process early on. The root cause was operational.
Speaker 1:Okay, but then how does cross-functional thinking change that outcome?
Speaker 2:Well, imagine instead, management, marketing and operations sit down together. They look at the whole customer journey, end-to-end. By talking, sharing data, understanding the different touch points together, they figure out. Oh wait, the friction isn't awareness.
Speaker 1:It's right here in onboarding so they find the actual problem source.
Speaker 2:They find the actual source and because the right people are in the room operations, in this case they can actually fix it. They resolve that bottleneck.
Speaker 1:And then the positive effects start spreading right.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Suddenly. Marketing can be effective because they're bringing people into a system that actually works. Operations has improved the delivery.
Speaker 1:So you get real growth because you solve the real problem, not just the symptom. It's a powerful example of how working together gets you there.
Speaker 2:Definitely it shows you stop putting Band-Aids on things.
Speaker 1:Okay, so we get the why and we see it in action, but the million-dollar question is the how. How do you, listening right now, actually start building this into your organization? How do you make it part of the daily routine? The article gives some solid tactics.
Speaker 2:It does and it starts with goals. The first big step is align on business goals, not just departmental metrics.
Speaker 1:OK, what does that look like practically?
Speaker 2:It means moving beyond, say, marketing only caring about lead numbers or sales only caring about closed deals. This quarter. You need shared goals, shared KPIs that reflect the overall health of the business, things like customer lifetime value or maybe churn rate itself or net promoter score, things that require multiple teams to succeed.
Speaker 1:So everyone owns a piece of the bigger outcome.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and you reinforce this with regular strategy reviews, planning sessions, where you actually get input from all the key departments, not just leadership.
Speaker 1:Right, get everyone pulling in the same direction. Okay, what's next?
Speaker 2:Next up create cross-functional teams for projects. So for key initiatives or big problems, you deliberately assemble a team with people from different areas marketing ops, maybe, hr leadership, whoever's relevant.
Speaker 1:And give them ownership.
Speaker 2:Yes, give them clear ownership to solve that specific problem. This naturally breaks down silos because they have to work together. It also tends to generate way more creative solutions because you have diverse perspectives.
Speaker 1:That makes sense. But don't those teams sometimes get balled down like too many opinions, slow decisions? How do you avoid that?
Speaker 2:That's a fair point and the article touches on it. The key is empowerment and clear roles within that team. Someone needs to be the ultimate owner or decision maker for that project, even within the group. It's not about endless debate. It's about shared understanding leading to better, faster decisions, because you have the right info from all sides and good communication helps.
Speaker 1:Which leads to the next tactic.
Speaker 2:Precisely. Number three is improve internal communication systems, and this means getting serious about going beyond just drowning in Slack messages or endless email chains. We've all been there, right. The article suggests implementing tools and processes that actually help these cross-departmental teams work smoothly together. Think dedicated project management software, shared dashboards everyone can see, maybe structured monthly meetings specifically for alignment across teams.
Speaker 1:So make it easy and normal to collaborate across boundaries. Make it the default yeah, not the exception, ok. And the last tactic, this one feels maybe a bit more cultural.
Speaker 2:It is, and it might be the most powerful Make space for curiosity. Cultural. It is and it might be the most powerful Make space for curiosity. This sounds simple, but it's huge. It means actively encouraging people at all levels to ask why are we doing it this way and how does what I'm doing affect other parts of the business?
Speaker 1:So fostering that systems thinking mindset.
Speaker 2:Exactly, just asking those questions regularly can shift the way people approach problems. Asking those questions regularly can shift the way people approach problems. It opens the door to better insights, better solutions, maybe even those bold, outside-the-box ideas that really move the needle.
Speaker 1:It comes from being curious about the whole picture. Okay, so if companies, if individuals actually adopt these practices, align goals, build cross-functional teams, fix communication, foster curiosity, what's the big payoff? What changes?
Speaker 2:The change, according to the source, is pretty profound. It's transformative. You fundamentally stop just reacting and putting out fires with Band-Aid solutions. You start actually digging down and solving the real problems, the root causes.
Speaker 1:That sounds like a much better use of energy.
Speaker 2:It absolutely is. And you stop that clunky process of one department just finishing their piece and, you know, tossing it over the wall to the next team, hoping it works out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the handoff problem.
Speaker 2:Right. Instead, you start intentionally designing things customer experiences, internal processes, marketing campaigns so they flow seamlessly from start to finish, because everyone involved understood the whole journey. So ultimately, you stop running around in circles, feeling inefficient. You start running your business, or even just your projects, like a well, like a well oiled machine where all the parts work together smoothly.
Speaker 1:That's a compelling picture. So, wrapping this up, the big takeaway seems clear Cross functional isn't just corporate jargon. It really is a different way of seeing and operating. It's about looking deeper, solving harder problems and building something truly resilient. It's the shift from fixing symptoms to actually curing the underlying issues.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And connecting back to that idea of digging deep, it really underlines that what looks like a problem over here, its roots might be somewhere completely different, somewhere unexpected in the system. And you'll only find those roots if you adopt that wider interconnected view. That cross-functional perspective is what lets you see the whole map.
Speaker 1:Which leaves us with a final thought for you, our listener. Think about a challenge you're facing right now, maybe at work, maybe even something personal. How might looking at it through this cross-functional lens, thinking about all the interconnected parts, the hidden dependencies, help you find the real root cause? Could it lead you to a truly effective solution, instead of just another temporary fix? Something to consider
