How to facilitate solutions?

I love facilitating problem solving. I love forging into the great unknown and orchestrating solutions by drawing knowledge, ideas and talent out of the experts.

I find it fascinating that large organizations often struggle when significant business issues when they can't be solved within one operational department. Individual teams operate well within their own domain, but many complex issues need to be resolved through cross-functional collaboration.

This is the time when organizations need leaders who have skills like a theatre director or an orchestra conductor. For complex issues, one person does not possess all the answers. These are the times when leaders need to be solution facilitators. They need to believe in their experts and encourage them to work together. Their role is to draw out expertise from the diverse talents on their team and coach the team through collaborative problem solving.

To do this, they play the role of translator, conductor, mediator and artist. They help the entire team understand the problem that they need to solve. They draw out all the various aspects of the issue. They challenge the team members to think outside the box, stimulate their creativity by asking "What If...?", and composing a masterpiece of collaborative ideas.

There are some fundamental skills that I use to lead a team towards solving cross-functional business issues.

1) Respect the experts from each of the teams
2) Translate concepts to ensure that people from other teams understand each other
3) Use simple visual sketches to illustrate the concepts described by the experts
4) Build a spatial illustration of the concepts from various teams until everyone can visualize the context of the problem they are trying to solve
5) Prompt "What If" discussions from the illustrations to probe for overlooked components or hidden issues
6) Assemble elements of the solution visually and interactively with the cross-functional team to stimulate deeper discussions and build a model of the solution components

Often it is possible to come away from a facilitated problem-solving session with almost a complete solution design. From there it is possible to sketch out the tasks for the project plan and get a clear picture of the resources required and their inter-dependencies.

It is critically important to initiate cross-functional problem solving sessions as early as possible to ensure that the diverse teams are aligned with a common understanding and goal. Often, this process is left until the "project" is officially approved and launched, but in my opinion, that is too late. To get accurate project plans and estimates, this initial solution facilitation process needs to be done as soon as the problem is identified. In the best case scenario, cross-functional solution facilitation can even identify simple quick fixes before the problems escalate into critical issues.

Large organizations need to be structured into functional groups in order to operate effectively, however, they should also integrate operational standards on how to bridge the gaps between the groups and have a more collaborative process for solving significant business issues.

I'd be very intersted in hearing from people in organizations that have found ways to build a culture of cross-departmental collaboration for resolving issues. I'm also interested in hearing from large companies that are struggling with this type of issue.