Conversations On OD

Best Practice for Creating Cross-Functional Teams

In an ever increasing field of changes in business operating environments, agile organizations depend on speedy responses to market opportunities. Industry leaders appearing invincible five years ago are now struggling to recreate and reframe their organizations just to keep their head above waters, that is, if it is not too late to stage a rebound.

So how do organizations redesign their businesses to come up with timely services and products? Donna Howes shares a comparable experience in a supply chain organization which chose to form cross-functional teams to: increase speed in responding to the market, deal with more complex issues, build an organization-wide common focus on the customer and facilitate organizational learning. She elaborates on some of the 10 factors that build the success of cross-functional teams and adds the importance of synergy and collaborative decision-making.

 

Donna Howes is a Certified Executive Coach and a Certified Human Resource Professional (CHRP). She writes for the People Talk professional magazine of the BC Human Resource Management Association. She is founder and principal of the consulting organization: Humanity at Work (www.humanityatwork.ca ). At the time of this interview, Donna is incumbent Vice-President of the BC Organization Development Network.

Qualifications: Linking People and Business Strategy

A concurrent sessions presentation of this topic was made during the joint BC ODN and ISPI-Vancouver cracker barrel event, "Core Tools for Performance Improvement" on April 10, 2012 at Downtown BCIT in Vancouver.

In this session, Sam Chen and Nick Freeman take you on ICBC’s journey as they begin the process of tracking and measuring skills and competencies over time. They share their vision, for the next 3 years, that ties together business process, systems, learning, management involvement/assessment, career development and overall measurement of human capital change.

The process of defining qualifications proceeds with five guiding principles to ensure an organization-wide ownership of change. The challenge of aligning people skills and competencies to support strategic objectives opens new opportunities for collaboration. 

 

Samuel Chen is the Manager of Organization Development Practices at ICBC. For the past three years, he has led the development of corporate eLearning and delivery of employee and leadership development programs.  During his tenure he has driven the redesign of a new skill and competency framework, revamped L&D reporting, put in a new leadership development model and improved strategic business alignment.  More recently, he has helped create a Corporate Learning Strategy and is leading the enablement of this strategy through the implementation and sustainment of a newly formed Learning Systems area.

Nick Freeman, Learning Consultant, LLB, MBA, CHRP, is currently focused on supporting learning transformational programs, including the use of virtual learning room technologies, the evolution of the skills/competencies proficiency framework, and the development of learning related metrics (to which the qualifications framework is linked). He has 15 years HR and Business Consulting experience that includes running Talent Management programs; developing balance score cards and other human capital performance metrics, the development of HR analytical models, and strategic planning. Nick has a deep interest in wider OD Practices including Organizational Culture, and in Organizational Change.

View the slide deck of the presentation: Download Qualifications Presentation