If new products are the lifeblood of your organization, you are undoubtedly feeling the heat. The complexities in delivering sophisticated solutions to today’s discerning customers creates immense and unending pressure.

The biggest challenges, however, are not technical. An informal survey of our global clients at Versus Global revealed that 70-90% of the biggest headaches are caused by colleagues who are not aligned or collaborating effectively.

Before sharing the requirements for successfully leading others through the work of new product development, here is a short list of the most common barriers that slow an organization’s ability to bring new value to the market:

1. The identity of a core, product or program team is not as strong as the identity colleagues bring with them from their function. Outcome: The objectives of the function will override that of the program.
2. The program team aligns to a shared objective but fails to align to a human imperative: The non-negotiable interpersonal behaviors the team will model, and measure, through the exercise. Outcome: Trust gets weaker as the project is executed.
3. Colleagues look at the same data; yet, because they operate with different experiences, beliefs and biases, they interpret that data differently. Outcome: The team operates with a different reality, making it impossible to collaborate.
4. Team members fail to regularly revisit who has decision-making authority and why. Outcome: The team defaults to consensus-style decision-making, which adds months to the project.
5. Most professionals simply don’t know how to collaborate. Why? Without a shared definition of collaboration, any interaction will suffice. Outcome: Collaboration, which should be the lifeblood of innovation, becomes a nearly useless exercise.

To successfully address the “people challenges” here and increase the speed of product development workflow, consider the following best practices:

1. Expand the boundaries of “team.” The single greatest threat to successfully delivering your new product on time and on budget is this: Participants along the workflow will likely come to the project identifying with their function rather than the customer and product. If, for example, marketing team members and research and development (R&D) colleagues don’t think of themselves as on the same team, you already know they will include one another too infrequently and too late when making decisions. Seamless coordination of talent requires taking steps early and often to make certain colleagues identify as trusted teammates on the same team.
2. Strengthen the alignment of hearts and minds to priorities. It is not enough to align team members intellectually to a plan. All team members must also be emotionally committed to a shared human imperative as well. Successfully executed, this means that values such as trust, collaboration and transparency become stronger. (Note: Just as your business deliverables are non-negotiable, so, too, should your human imperative be required.)
3. Create a shared reality. It is impossible for team members to work together effectively when they operate with a different definition of what is true about aspects of the project. At the heart of new product development is the frequent creation of new knowledge. This means three things must occur: full information flow, transparency and a shared experience in interpreting data.
4. Decide who decides. Anticipate that roles and responsibilities will be clear for each team member until new information requires the team to adapt the plan. Because discoveries (surprises!) happen almost daily, it is incumbent that team members regularly practice decision-making hygiene. Establish the discipline of regularly asking these questions in meetings: What is the specific problem we’re solving? If or after we collaborate, who is empowered to make the decision?
5. Collaboration is not an intention. It’s a skill. When someone says, “let’s collaborate,” does everyone know what that means? Our clients have benefitted from this definition of collaboration: An interaction that aligns team members through the co-creation of new knowledge. With this definition you can be more discerning about how frequently you need to collaborate.

 The speed with which you deliver new products to the market is determined by these people requirements, and as a learning leader, you play a key role in developing them.