In my daily work as Chief Business Development Officer for a private company, I engage extensively with great leaders, middle managers, and staff in various roles within the health and care services, across a dozen countries. It’s long been known that more and better cross-functional collaboration is absolutely essential if this sector is to meet the challenges it faces—challenges like the growing aging population, limited resources, and a declining number of available professionals.
Frankly, I believe we no longer have time to politicize the situation that country after country is now plunging into. This isn’t a matter for blue or red election campaigns. It’s something we must address together—across political colors, professions, and people. If we don’t, we all risk crashing together.
And yet those damned silos stand firm and stubborn as Mount Everest itself. These silos delay execution, hinder innovation, and slow decision-making. Let me give you an example from within the health and care sector:
Why should a department head invest time and resources in implementing an innovative new solution if the gains are realized in another department—where another leader (also a rival in the same career hierarchy) gets the applause, a better budget result, and a stronger position ahead of their next salary negotiation?
The “why” here is clearly negative. But do you know the answer to the “how” question—how we break this barrier?
In their work with corporate leaders, Jeff Rosenthal and Molly Rosen found that without leadership collaboration at the top, silos are inevitable. That gives these leaders a particular responsibility, in my view: they must be the ones to tear silos down. We need a new breed of leaders who go beyond managing their own teams to also prioritize leading across the organization. And yes, that means we also need owners who give them good reasons to act across boundaries—to be “laterally agile,” so to speak.
Read more: “How to Lead Across a Siloed Organization” by Jeff Rosenthal and Molly Rosen, where they discuss what separates successful cross-functional leaders from the rest.
What prevents cross-functional leadership?
Organizational complexity, more work spanning multiple functions, and the need for faster decision-making in a rapidly evolving world—all of this makes cross-functional collaboration critical for staying competitive.
Yes, I know—it’s business-speak. So what? This is simply about being able to deliver on your MISSION. Whether you’re operating in a public, private, or non-profit context. If we fail in our missions in and for our health and care sectors, we risk the collapse of vital systems for our country, our people, our families. That’s the real issue here!
And then we have the post-pandemic changes—more geographically dispersed teams and less personal interaction.
We need incentives that encompass whole organizations, companies, and sectors. If we don’t, the silos win.
Through interviews, Rosenthal and Rosen identified clear patterns in how leaders thrive in siloed environments. They discovered distinct mindsets, skills, and practices that the successful leaders use to drive results across boundaries and for their organizations.
Remember I asked if you knew the answer to how we break the barrier of the silos? You just read a key: “for the organization.”
They also found that most leaders feel poorly equipped to lead laterally. Their experience and development lie in traditional vertical leadership—that is, leading their own team. They know far less about getting things done with peers who have different agendas, priorities, and motivations.
What characterizes cross-functional leaders?
Leaders who thrive across functions exhibit what we call “lateral agility”—the ability to move quickly side-to-side while maintaining balance. They spend as much time leading across the organization as they do with their own teams.
In practice, this means collaborating effectively with other leaders from different departments to advance the goals of the company, organization, or sector—while still keeping focus on the goals of their own department or group.
Here are three traits shared by leaders with “lateral agility”:
1. Think Bigger!
Cross-functional leaders embrace an expanded mindset rooted in humility, aimed at activating what we might call “the bigger picture success”:
- They put the company/organization/sector first.
- They consistently prioritize the greater mission over team or personal goals.
- They are unselfish.
In cross-functional decisions, you might hear my team say things like:
“We’re not here to sell you a product and leave. We’re here to invite you into a journey—together. Because you are always our best guides to better solutions that serve your end-users best. We are social entrepreneurs. Sure, we run solid workplaces, but we move forward with our hearts first. That heart is for your end-users—and the demanding situation your sector is in.”
Cross-functional leaders believe their primary role is to find expertise everywhere—not to build their careers through everything. They show their humility through genuine curiosity and willingness to draw on others’ expertise. They know the best path to mission success is building the right team—not doing it all themselves or just protecting their own.
In fact, the best features of our product concept have been developed with and within the sector—across departments, and up and down their verticals. And yes, I know we’re small in the grand scheme, but in many ways, the Motiview concept offers, in micro, a pretty good picture of the macro-level factors we need to keep our systems from collapsing.
Yes, I’m proud of my team! And deeply impressed by the end-users, their families, the volunteers, the professionals—and their leaders. We hate silos together!
Read more: https://motiview.no/en
2. Relational Capacity
A high degree of curiosity and empathy gives these cross-functional leaders the relational capacity to build trustworthy, mutually beneficial relationships across the organization:
- They build understanding and trust by proactively clarifying colleagues’ and stakeholders’ motivations and constraints. As one interviewed leader put it: “If you don’t understand what it’s like to be in your colleague’s shoes, you’re not going anywhere.”
- They seek win-win solutions that help all parties feel like part of the solution. Leaders like this are a real threat to silos! I truly root for them!
- They also ask paradoxical questions: “How can you and I find a solution that lets me achieve what I need, while also letting your team reach its goals?”
Such questions force expansive thinking and shift conversations away from “either/or” and toward “yes/and/and/and…”
3. Innovating on Ordinary Days
Leaders who succeed across silos innovate on ordinary days. For them, “innovation” is not just a word for reports, articles, and keynotes. It’s something they live and breathe. They move forward innovatively—on normal days.
At our workplace, we collaborate across all marketing teams based on three principles:
- Come with a plan in your hand
We welcome new ideas—but bring a sketch clear enough for us to quickly understand the journey you’re proposing. - Raise your hand
We build a culture of “banging heads together”—disagreement is welcome, wanted, and safe (even if tough to stand in). We want every question and objection, because they serve as correctives and enrich the work. And if we don’t air them, they’ll live under the radar anyway. - Offer your helping hand
Contribute your skills even outside your daily task set. We all have something to learn, now and then.
Why do we do this?
Because the MISSION always depends on time and resource management where every one of us, every team, and we together across teams carry a SHARED responsibility.
We don’t start from scratch—but we don’t force a ready-made plan onto people who weren’t invited to help shape it either. We move forward innovatively—together, across.
The leaders silos fear most are the ones who’ve realized that the fastest way to alignment is to involve others from the beginning. Sketch out ideas, sure—but co-create the solution. This kind of cross-functional movement builds trust.
Without trust between silo leaders, we lose to the silos we lead. And without owners who understand that cross-boundary work must be rewarded more than silo work, we might as well build more silos and declare bankruptcy on values like “humanity” and “collaboration.”
Want to become a better cross-functional leader?
Some organizations are beginning to realize that promoting collaboration takes intentional effort. They’re developing “lateral agility” in their leaders, rethinking incentives to favor cooperation over conflict, and exploring new structures to reduce silos.
That’s reason to be glad!
Here are a few prompts for your own agility:
- Do you spend enough time and intentional energy building the cross-sector relationships that matter most to the MISSION you’re responsible for?
- What are you doing to build trust and play a constructive role in the ecosystem your business or organization is part of?
Knowing that the most agile leaders spend as much time leading across as they do vertically—what does that mean for how you structure your time, with the TEAMS you lead and those you interact with?
Spend time with peer leaders outside your domain. Learn their goals, their constraints, their motivations. The better you walk in their shoes, the more lateral trust you build—and the more you’ll understand your “extended team” (because yes, we’re all in this ecosystem together), and what we must tackle TOGETHER to improve the system for all.
With the work of people like Rosenthal and Rosen, we now know that “lateral agility” is an essential leadership trait today. It’s no longer enough to lead one team well—most meaningful work happens across functions and organizations. The definition of effective leadership is evolving in response to this new reality.
By becoming more agile laterally, leaders can make cross-functional collaboration part of everyday life. We need that! Because it allows our organizations to break down silos, speed up decisions, and bring innovations to life.
Remember: in innovative math, 1 plus 1 equals 3. Together, we win more—for more people, better.
DREIESKIVA|Roald Kvam 
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