How do you recognise cross-team collaboration?

Describe what it unblocked for your team, and copy in their manager. Somebody who helps another function is doing work that will not appear anywhere in their own performance review unless a person from the other side puts it there.

Why does cross-team work go unrewarded?

Because assessment happens inside teams. The manager writing the review sees the roadmap that was delivered, not the fortnight spent making another team’s launch possible, and the person doing it has no comfortable way to raise it themselves.

Should you thank the person or their manager?

Both, in one message if you can. The person gets the recognition and the manager gets information they did not have. Sending it only to the person leaves the professional value on the table.

What cross-team work is most often missed?

Translation and prevention. Making two functions understand each other has no output to point at, and flagging a change that would have broken somebody’s workflow shows up as nothing happening.

How do you recognise a whole team from outside it?

Be specific about one thing and one person, then thank the team. A message that praises a team in general reads as diplomacy; naming what actually helped reads as attention.

Recognition messages

Recognising Cross-Team Work: 10 Messages

Work that spans two teams has two managers, and is often properly visible to neither of them.

Two managers, neither watching

Work that crosses a team boundary is assessed inside a team. The person who spent a fortnight making somebody else’s launch possible is reviewed on their own roadmap, which that fortnight did not advance.

They will not raise it themselves, because arguing that you helped another team sounds like an excuse. So the only route by which it becomes visible is somebody on the receiving side saying so, in writing, where their manager can see it.

Say what it unblocked

A thank-you that stays on your side of the boundary is pleasant and useless to them. Their manager has no idea what your team was stuck on.

One sentence about what became possible turns a nice message into evidence.

10 messages you can send

Thank you for sitting in our planning session every week for a month. You had nothing to gain from it and the roadmap is better.
Manager, other team
Names the absence of self-interest.
Elena chased four teams for two weeks to get an answer that took each of them ten minutes. The ten minutes is not the work.
Manager, on coordination
Reframes what the effort actually consisted of.
Thanks for explaining the billing model to design without making anyone feel stupid about not knowing it.
Peer, cross-function
Credits the manner, which is what makes it repeatable.
You flagged that our change would break support’s workflow before we shipped it. Support would not have known to look.
Peer, prevention
Describes a problem that never happened.
Thank you for coming to the incident review even though it was not your outage. The question you asked changed the action items.
Manager, cross-team
One specific contribution rather than attendance.
Marcus has spent this quarter making two teams’ schemas agree with each other. It is the least visible thing anyone has done and it unblocked both.
Manager, invisible work
Explicitly labels it invisible, which is the point.
Thanks for the translation. Engineering heard a requirement and sales heard a timeline, and both of those came from you saying the same thing twice.
Peer, on interpreting
Names a skill that has no job title.
You gave us your only spare engineer for a fortnight when your own quarter was tight. I have not forgotten it.
Manager, on lending
Recognises a cost paid by another team.
Thank you for the standing invitation to your team’s demo. Three of us go now and we build fewer duplicate things.
Peer, on openness
Ties a small habit to a concrete outcome.
Priya answered every question from our side within an hour for three months. Nobody was measuring that and it changed how fast we moved.
Manager, on responsiveness
Puts a duration on something nobody counted.

What makes one land

Send it to their manager as well as to them. Cross-team work is invisible in the place where their performance is actually assessed.
Describe what it unblocked on your side. Their manager has no way of knowing, and that is the part that makes it count.
Recognise the translating, not just the doing. Somebody who makes two functions understand each other has done the hard part.
Thank the team that lent you someone. The cost landed on their quarter, not yours.
Name the prevention. Cross-team work often shows up as a problem that never happened, which nobody can see without being told.

Questions people ask

How do you recognise cross-team collaboration?: Describe what it unblocked for your team, and copy in their manager. Somebody who helps another function is doing work that will not appear anywhere in their own performance review unless a person from the other side puts it there.
Why does cross-team work go unrewarded?: Because assessment happens inside teams. The manager writing the review sees the roadmap that was delivered, not the fortnight spent making another team’s launch possible, and the person doing it has no comfortable way to raise it themselves.
Should you thank the person or their manager?: Both, in one message if you can. The person gets the recognition and the manager gets information they did not have. Sending it only to the person leaves the professional value on the table.
What cross-team work is most often missed?: Translation and prevention. Making two functions understand each other has no output to point at, and flagging a change that would have broken somebody’s workflow shows up as nothing happening.
How do you recognise a whole team from outside it?: Be specific about one thing and one person, then thank the team. A message that praises a team in general reads as diplomacy; naming what actually helped reads as attention.