Collaboration Is Not a Culture Poster: Give Teams the Same Picture

Most advice on cross-functional collaboration comes down to asking people to communicate more and respect each other. Both are good ideas, and neither tells you what to do on Monday morning when three groups hold three different understandings of the same product.

What has worked for me is more practical. I try to give everybody the same picture of the problem, the same reasons for a decision and a clear line to who owns what.

Turn complexity into something people can question

In my current work with several organisations and a wide range of stakeholders, the research, workflows and dependencies are complex enough that a written document would never have aligned everyone. So I turn them into visual maps, explain them in plain English, and keep changing them as people ask questions.

That last part is what makes it collaboration. A map people can challenge becomes shared. A polished artefact presented at them stays yours.

Put the strategy on one page

I also like a strategy on a page: vision and purpose, objectives, actions and guiding principles. Its value is less in the document than in the conversations it makes possible. When a team disagrees about a priority, there is something to point to.

I then link sprint outcomes visually to that strategy, using Miro. People can see why this week's work matters, which is hard to get from a ticket.

Look at decisions through three lenses

Disagreements between functions are often about which lens someone is using. I find it helps to name them explicitly:

• Technology: is it feasible?
• Customer experience: is it desirable?
• Business: is it viable?

An engineer raising a concern and a business owner pressing for a date may both be right. Treating those as three legitimate questions lowers the temperature.

Let people hear the customer directly

A product manager can become a filter between users and the team without meaning to. I prefer to share research findings so teams hear customer priorities first-hand. It changes how people argue, because the discussion becomes about what customers said rather than what the product owner wants.

Influence what you do not own

At my previous Government role, agency onboarding relied on fragmented, bespoke integrations across several products. The customer experience was inconsistent, and provisioning stretched to four weeks.

I did not own those products, so I could not simply direct a solution. I shared the data and agency feedback with the people who did own them, and led workshops to find a viable approach together. I also set out artefacts and readiness requirements upfront in an onboarding pack, with FAQs and clear roles.

That work led to the Service Orchestrator, which combines a consent screen, Proof of Identity and Profile Connect into one orchestrated flow. Provisioning time for an agency fell from four weeks to one.

Give alignment a home

When eHealth NSW needed to bring health services onto the products' ecosystem, including the Consent and Records Management for Immunisation initiative, many parties had to agree on scope, roles and communication. We built a cross-functional team, shared onboarding guidelines and set up a steering committee to keep channels clear. Each NSW Health agency onboarding was delivered in under two weeks.

A steering committee can be pure theatre. This one worked because it had a specific job: keeping aligned people aligned.

A practical starting point

• Draw the current process with the people involved, and let them correct it.
• Write the strategy on one page.
• Name the three lenses when a debate gets stuck.
• Bring the team closer to real customer feedback.
• Agree who owns each decision before you need to make it.

Good collaboration does feel friendly, but I have come to see friendliness as a result. It tends to appear once people stop guessing what everybody else thinks is going on.