Tips for Growing the Skills to Solve Cross-Functional Technical Problems
As organizations grow, their hardest technical problems increasingly arise between teams rather than within them. These cross-functional, cross-domain problems cannot be solved through more meetings, status updates, or risk tracking alone; they require redefining the problem, structuring it, and creating an execution model that moves people to action. The post presents Toss’s Technical Program Manager (TPM) role as an example of this approach. ## Why Cross-Functional Problems Persist - Individual teams may perform well while the organization still fails to optimize as a whole. - Technical issues often span product, infrastructure, data, security, operations, strategy, and organizational design. - Common symptoms include: - Unclear ownership - Missing decision-makers - Conflicting priorities - Dependencies across multiple teams - Important “gray areas” with no formal owner - As organizations mature, these boundary problems become more common because team responsibilities become clearer while cross-team gaps remain. ## The Core Principle: Redefine the Problem - Cross-functional technical problems are not solved by increasing management activity. - More frequent meetings, status reports, risk registers, and stakeholder alignment may be useful but often address symptoms. - The real bottleneck may be: - An absent decision structure - Ambiguous ownership - Conflicting priorities - A system that does not connect individual team efforts - Effective problem-solving starts by identifying the underlying issue rather than merely describing delays or communication problems. ## Capabilities Required to Solve These Problems ### Reframing the Problem - Identify why schedules slip or decisions stall. - Determine which responsibilities or decisions are missing. - Find the structural conditions that repeatedly create the same gap. - Without accurate problem definition, organizations continue managing symptoms. ### Turning Ambiguity into Structure - Make decisions, options, responsibilities, dependencies, and sequencing explicit. - Break complex issues into manageable units. - Replace vague discussion with concrete decision points and ownership. ### Exercising Strategic Judgment - Distinguish temporary incidents from recurring structural problems. - Decide whether the issue can be solved within one team or requires broader intervention. - Assess whether immediate action is necessary. - Prioritize problems that improve the organization’s overall execution capability. ### Converting Plans into Execution - Identify who must act and which decisions must happen first. - Remove blockers and turn unclear discussions into explicit decisions. - Secure agreement on action plans and ensure those actions actually occur. - The goal is not merely to monitor execution, but to make execution possible. ### Influencing Without Formal Authority - Cross-functional work rarely succeeds through hierarchy alone. - TPMs need trust, sound judgment, and the ability to translate between teams with different goals and constraints. - Their influence should come from credibility and problem-solving results rather than title. ### Seeing People and Structure Together - Many technical problems are also caused by unclear roles, unsuitable team structures, or outdated operating mechanisms. - Effective intervention may require changing processes, redistributing responsibilities, or involving leadership—not just modifying technology. ## A Practical Starting Point for Less Autonomous Organizations - **Solve a small, concrete bottleneck first:** Demonstrate that involvement makes work clearer and faster. - **Add structure within existing coordination duties:** Use meetings and schedule management to expose decisions, dependencies, and blockers. - **Clarify ownership in a limited scope:** Define the real owner, decision rights, and completion criteria for a small initiative. - **Build evidence through successful cases:** Organizations often recognize new roles through demonstrated results rather than role descriptions. ## Important Cautions - Coordination remains valuable, but it should serve problem-solving rather than become the goal. - Lack of formal authority does not mean lack of influence; trust, structure, and results can be more powerful. - Introducing an idealized role too quickly may trigger resistance. It is better to make the approach work within the organization’s current environment and expand from proven examples. The central recommendation is to stop treating cross-functional technical problems as coordination exercises. First ask what the real bottleneck is, who is missing, and what execution structure would enable progress; then use that understanding to drive concrete organizational change.
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