How Boundary Spanning Supports Great Teams

Have you ever struggled to get people aligned who are working across different teams and projects, even when you know it’s important to do so?

Companies are very good at organizing for vertical objectives, but not always as good at managing horizontal patterns of work.

This is where boundary spanning is important.

“Boundary spanning” is the process of designing activities and skills that connect and support cross-functional activities to improve communication and facilitate better alignment toward goals.

When reviewing success across marketing, sales, business and IT programs, HBR says, “In the successes we have seen, in almost every case, there is a very special profile of the person leading the effort. This Most Valuable Player of technology implementations is a boundary spanner.”

One of best ways to think more about this process is to first consider vertical vs horizontal objectives.

Today’s Companies Need To Support Both Vertical & Horizontal Objectives

Vertical Objectives

Vertical objectives are those of a specific organizing unit, such as a department, program, or team. These objectives are those where the outcomes of the work are largely within the remit of the team that is managing them.

Horizontal Objectives

Horizontal activities are those that span multiple areas. These horizontal activities call for different programs and teams to collaborate, even though these areas may be organized into vertical structures.

Horizontal activities are essential to today’s business because:

work is increasingly complex, requiring all elements of a company to work together, in order to realize the company’s vision.
customer experiences, which have become a differentiator in today’s experience-driven economy often rely on joining together end-to-end processes.
modern teams (think agile teams, hybrid teams, etc.) are made up of people from many departments. These teams are ‘horizontal’ by nature, but if they embody a ‘vertical’ mindset, they will not perform at their best.
many businesses and products operate on a global basis, which requires teams to bridge geographies, processes, systems, and departments.

Kitty Wooley, who worked at the US Department of Education for many years and has researched this area says, “At this point in history… all of the problems, any big problem, any hairy wicked problem, is bigger than any one agency or any corporation. So, people have to work together to solve it.”

Why Isn’t Boundary Spanning Always Supported?

While horizontal activities are more common in workplaces today, they don’t always receive formal and explicit support. Why does this happen?

This can be from a combination of reasons, such as:

People may lack the skills and experience supporting horizontal activities and navigating the challenges that come with these patterns of work (for example, “how do we collaborate to reach a decision when I’m used to making the decision on X”).
Company objectives and KPIs may be focused largely on vertical activities (often this is the result of how legacy KPIs have been set, flagging that the organization has not yet changed to also support a horizontal pattern of work).
Leaders and managers (at various levels) may not set an example for their teams that encourages horizontal collaboration.

The Cost of Not Supporting Boundary Spanning Work

You may have been part of companies that haven’t supported horizontal work.

If so, you likely will have seen firsthand some of the consequences of this, which include:

When people reach out for support from other departments, they may have difficulty finding an audience.
Seeking collaboration from other business units requires heavy influencing (rather than collaboration being a ‘default behavior’).
Language used amongst people—an often classic symptom of cultures unsupportive of boundary spanning work—is characterized by ‘us and them’.
In these environments, it’s not unusual for people to feel challenged, anxious, and unsettled when engaged in those activities that are beyond their direct team.

These symptoms block the organization from doing more complex tasks efficiently and effectively.

And it’s a double-edged sword.

On the surface, vertically-driven teams produce very strong results in the short and medium term. These are usually directly tied to the vertical objectives they support. However, the more complex and important work to an organization’s longer-term goals, which can only be done by teams collaborating horizontally across the organization, is sidestepped or deferred to the future.

Beyond company effectiveness, there can also be a high human cost. People in these challenging environments can feel unfulfilled in their roles, that it’s difficult to sustain energy in the role over extended periods, and may leave the company in search of a better environment.

How to Actively Support Boundary Spanning in Your Company

With this said, how can we be better at supporting horizontal work?

In order to know how you support these practices, it’s useful to think about the levels where you can target your support:

Individual: Encourage and support the person who naturally connects dots within the organization. Create time for them and ask how you can assist their efforts.
Team: Many companies have teams that, by their nature, span boundaries. Strategy teams or cross-departmental program teams often work horizontally to do their work. When you build connections with these teams and help their work, you support boundary spanning.
Organizational: Boundary spanning is a competence and skill set. Like Design Thinking or Project Management. By training your people how to collaborate and manage cross-functional work, you are helping your company build strengths in boundary spanning practices.

If you are leading a team, department, or company, you will have a role in supporting boundary spanning.

In addition to thinking about boundary spanning at these three levels, these simple activities can create a culture that fosters horizontal collaboration:

Creating common language – Often teams use different language to describe similar things. By creating a common language across teams, we improve the opportunity for common communication.
Elevate toward larger goals – When conflict arises between teams, elevate the conversation to a larger opportunity, so that teams can align on the bigger picture. For example, I once saw two departments arguing about their different objectives. When we “levelled up” and focused on the company objective that their separate initiatives were connected to, they found common ground about how each team played a role in the company’s success.
Orient toward customers – Everyone in a business has a stake in helping customers. By focusing on a company’s customers, and how Product X makes customers’ lives better, we provide a source of inspiration for teams working across horizontal activities.
Listen with empathy – When we listen to people with empathy, we seek to understand their perspective and give them space to contribute their view. This creates a context for boundary spanning conversations.
Unblock what’s not working – Strong managers and leaders look to identify where things are not working and take positive steps to help make their teams’ lives easier. Rather than put up with things when they’re not working, look to how you can actively shape an alternate, positive approach.
Encourage diverse views – There is a reason companies like IDEO favor multi-disciplined teams for innovation processes. Because diversity of viewpoints and styles exist in these teams, they are more accepting and embracing of alternate views, which encourages boundary spanning conversations. When you’re setting up new teams, ensure they have diverse members and perspectives, so differences and alternate experiences are welcomed.
Build in-person experiences for remote team – Even completely remote teams need time to come together and build face-to-face connections. Research suggests that in-person time getting to know each other is very important for reinforcing relationships, even if this time together is only once every 6 – 12 months). Wildbit, a completely remote company, organizes yearly retreats to get its remote teams together and says these are especially important because these retreats create “little moments of connection, the shared energy, and the sense of belonging that happen when we just sit around chairs and talk, get to know each other, and support each other both personally and at work.”