Clinging to traditional skills-based team structures is like trying to navigate a digital tsunami with a paper map.
It simply doesn’t work anymore. Siloes are reinforced. Your customer and employee experiences both suffer.
Below are ten reasons why structuring teams based on skills alone is setting your digital transformation up to fail:
- Cross-Functional Collaboration: Digital transformation emphasises agility and innovation, which are best supported by cross-functional teams that bring together diverse skills and perspectives. This approach breaks down silos and fosters a more collaborative and innovative environment. Key ingredients include at least one voice of the customer, product owner/s, leads and technical resources (for example, Scrum masters, technical leads and specialists), user experience, quality and marketing. All should play a role.
- Rapid Technological Change: The pace of technological change means that the skills needed today may be different tomorrow. Teams structured around fixed skills may struggle to adapt quickly to new technologies or methodologies. It is surprising how multi-disciplinary teams encourage growth and development.
- Focus on Product and Customer Experience: Digital transformation prioritises customer experience and product development, which requires input from multiple disciplines. Teams based on skills alone will not have the comprehensive view needed to deliver solutions that meet customer needs.
- Agile and Lean Methodologies: Modern project management methodologies like Agile emphasise adaptability, customer feedback, and iterative development. These approaches necessitate teams that can wear multiple hats and collaborate across traditional skill boundaries. Your best people on a digital transformation will embrace the opportunity to develop within an agile environment and gain skills as they deliver.
- Employee Growth and Engagement: Structuring teams based on skills can limit personal growth and engagement by confining individuals to specific roles. A more fluid team structure encourages continuous learning and development, keeping employees motivated and engaged. The best way to reinforce a hierarchy is to put every person doing the same role together in one team – essentially you are stifling growth, new idea generation and creating a silo based on power structures, not a focus on outputs and outcomes.
- Innovation Through Diversity: Diverse teams that include a mix of skills, experiences, and perspectives are more likely to produce innovative solutions. A skill-based structure reduces this diversity. Some of the best ideas I have had on digital transformations have come from people without the technical or functional background, but with fresh, eager eyes.
- Integration of Digital and Business Strategies: As digital strategies become integral to overall business strategies, teams need to understand both technical and business considerations. A skills-based team structure will not provide the necessary breadth of understanding.
- Customisation and Personalisation at Scale: Delivering personalised experiences to customers requires teams to rapidly iterate and leverage data across disciplines. Teams organised solely by skill will not be as effective in integrating data insights with creative solutions.
- Globalisation and Remote Work: Digital transformation has enabled more remote and globally distributed teams. Success in this environment depends on flexibility, communication, and collaboration beyond specific skill sets.
- Resilience to Disruptions: The COVID-19 pandemic underscored the need for organisations to be resilient and adaptable. Teams that are too rigidly structured around specific skills find it harder to pivot in response to disruptions or crises.
Give rise to flexibility, knowledge sharing and growth. Share the customer perspective, and eventually the thinking, across all team roles. Create outcomes that genuinely address customer needs, not because it is what you think the customer wants, but because you know what the customer wants. It’s hard not to know when the customer has a voice in the room.
I write about digital transformation weekly. My DMs are open for engaging conversations.
