Turning People into Teams

What Does Success Look Like?

To succeed or not to succeed? That is the question. Success is a loaded word, and it means different things to people across an organization.

Each person on a cross-functional team is a representative of a department. You might have two engineers, a researcher, a designer, and maybe one or two folks from data science or marketing. Each department has its own skills, rules, and standards. Every person will be looking at success for your project with a different set of eyes. If you take the usual approach, looking for an overall success metric to unite the team, you’re going to end up with something like: “We’re successful if the product sells.” But that won’t satisfy everyone for long.

Instead, think of success less ...