Stop the battles: Using authorities to set up cross-functional work

There is a way to create a culture of working together and stopping cross-functional work being the bane of your people’s working life, and it does not start with sending everyone away to learn how to handle conflict, find out their personality type or get 360 feedback.

Instead, it involves addressing the issue at its source by managers clarifying what they are each accountable for, confirming with their cross-over manager, then setting up role relationships for their people by integrating accountabilities and authorities.

Elliott Jaques provides  seven different types of authority to match with accountability for cross-functional roles in his work Requisite Organization.  A step-by-step process for applying this can be found in Andrew Olivier‘s book  Organisational Design: What Your University Forgot to Teach You, and I like to use the way of grouping the authorities put forward by Stephen and Chris Clement in It’s All about Work: Organizing Your Company to Get Work Done.

With accountability clear, cross-functional authorities to consider are below.  Remember, this is about the role relationship, so both roles need to know and understand the authority.

Advice Relationships

• Advisory Authority: role can put forward ideas to other roles, but they do not have to be followed. 
• Monitor Authority: role has  the authority to call a pause to the work in another area to first discuss, then escalate if they see as required.
• Audit Authority: role has the authority to call a complete stop to the work if they see as required.
• Prescribe Authority: role can directly instruct the other role to take action (for example fire warden in emergency situation)

Collaborative Relationships

• Coordinate Authority: role has the authority to call meetings of other roles who are expected to take part and contribute
• Collateral Authority: effectively teammates, can discuss and persuade, but ultimately execute what their manager would require.

Service Relationships

• Service Authority:  role has authority to request work, receiver is expected to advise cost and timelines, then complete the work once agreed.

Using the above authorities replaces personality and politics as the method to get the job done.   Why isn’t this common practice?  Two reasons: 1) it is not well known or instinctive to grasp, and; 2) it is easy to move this work down the executive priority list.

This is a shame, because the decision to genuinely integrate roles using accountabilities and the above authorities can be the moment that makes an organisation click.