No more silos

These days in selling environments, customer-service teams are more than li kely made up of people across the organization from different business func tions-such as sales and marketing, engineering, finance, and customer suppo rt. The members of these cross-functional teams can clash when they try to impose departmental agendas and different values on the team. The key to ge tting such teams to work together successfully is to gain their commitment to larger, shared goals that are linked to improving organization-wide sale s and customer satisfaction. For that, says Hennessey, customer teams need new rules of engagement. Within silos of different business units, you have people with different-an d often divergent-priorities, work styles, and belief systems. Hennessey de scribes these tough barriers and some dire consequences of the "wrong turns " diverse customer teams often make. Ironically, Hennessey points out, the most effective way to handle contention in such teams is "counterintuitive" -in other words, not what people's first fractions and responses tend to be naturally. Typically, customer teams in conflict withhold information, def end departmental goals, and rush to one favored solution-whatever is most c omfortable so that the conflict abates and everyone can retreat to their pe rsonal comfort zones. Instead, customer teams need new rules of engagement that encourage behaviors that link their actions with overall business stra tegies and offer opportunities for innovative thinking without risk. New rules of engagement include staying in the tension, welcoming diverse s tyles and ideas, maintaining mutual esteem among team members, maximizing t he flow of information, fostering creative solutions, and finding the highe r business purpose.