Onboarding a Cross-Functional Tribe: A Workshop Case Study
Introduction - Why this Workshop?
As my company introduced a new Tribe structure, leadership wanted to align tech and non-tech teams into a more collaborative way of working. Product squads relied on cross-functional input (e.g., marketing, sales), but work was frequently stalled due to unclear ownership and siloed knowledge.
This workshop aimed to break down silos, clarify roles, and foster collaboration across the Tribe.
Role: Workshop Facilitator
Format: 3 hours, in-person workshop, 22 participants
Tools: Miro, Post it notes, Microsoft Forms
The Process
DISCOVER
Challenges & Goals – What Problems Were We Solving?
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Non-tech teams (e.g., Marketing, Commercial, Brokers) had limited experience with Agile workflows.
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Key contributors split their time between Tribe work and other responsibilities (e.g. Commercial still processed partner leads).
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The customer journey was long and complex, spanning from lead generation → underwriting → sales → payment.
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Many participants didn’t fully understand the Tribe’s purpose or how teams connected
Goals for the Workshop:
Clarify who owns what in the Tribe structure.
Ensure teams understand where they contribute to the broader customer journey.
Surface key friction points affecting collaboration and customer experience.
Encourage cross-functional knowledge sharing to improve efficiency.
Challenges to Solve:
Workshop Design – How I Structured the Session
Pre-Workshop Preparation
DEFINE
Leadership Consultation:
Before designing a collaborative workshop, I find it's essential to engage with leadership to clarifying their expectations. This involved teasing out the specific goals and outcomes leadership hopes to achieve through the workshop.
Surveyed participants beforehand:
Secondly, it is often necessary to gather information about where participants currently stand in terms of knowledge, skills, and readiness.
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I quickly surveyed the participants asking: “What do you expect from this workshop? What do you hope to walk away with?”
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Responses showed many had no clear understanding of the Tribe’s purpose.
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I relayed this to leadership, helping adjust expectations to meet participants where they were.
Ahead of the session:
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Removed most tables to create a collaborative, informal space with workstations.
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Printed reference materials ahead of the session to create a "laptops closed" environment
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Prepared Miro board for display on the main screen and sent it to participants ahead of time so those who wished could preview the material and expectations
DELIVER
Execution & Insights – What Happened?
Delivering the Workshop
With the requirements gathered, I designed a workshop with two primary activities, along with an ice-breaker and recruited 4 key SME's from the participants to help facilitate the work.
Icebreaker: Profile Cards & Avatars
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To keep this intro exercise as efficient as possible, I sent the MIro board ahead of time, inviting participants to complete it. Sending material ahead of time, also helps those unfamiliar with Miro or whopshops to prepare and become more comfortable.
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I customised an Avatar creating exercise to break down some of the formality and allow participants to become accustomed to using the MIro white board.
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Creating a template for participants to complete meant that the exercise was more prepared and I was able to complete intros of 22 people in about 15mins.
Why? Helped introduce roles, ease formality, and highlight availability constraints
Main Exercise: Customer Journey Mapping (Group Activity)
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Introduced two user personas to focus on.
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Split participants into 4 groups, each tackling a specific journey stage.
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Placed key SMEs (Marketing, Brokers, Sales Leaders) in each group to guide discussion.
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Teams mapped out the user flow, identifying friction points from both customer & agent perspectives.
Why? Seeing the full end-to-end journey gave teams visibility into bottlenecks and cross-team dependencies.
Problem-Solving: How Might We? (HMW)
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Each team took their biggest pain points and turned them into "How Might We" (HMW) questions.
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Groups brainstormed potential solutions together.
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A nominated team member presented the findings, asking:
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“Who in the Tribe can help solve this issue?”
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“What expertise is missing?”
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Why? Encouraged collaborative problem-solving and ownership of next steps.
Key Outcomes & Unexpected Insights
MEASURE
Execution & Insights – What Happened?
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Teams gained major clarity on cross-functional roles.
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Seeing the full customer journey visualized for the first time was eye-opening - the process was far more complex than expected.
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Marketing teams were highly engaged - one group spent extra time absorbing marketing techniques, which I let continue because it was valuable.
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A major broker frustration surfaced - the proposed platform didn’t support payments, requiring brokers to manually re-enter customer data in another system.
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Real-time knowledge-sharing helped bridge gaps - people heard challenges they weren’t aware of before
Post-Workshop Survey Feedback:
“Great to see how all the pieces fit together.”
“Helped clarify what we can go to each other for.”
“We need more of these sessions to track progress.”
“Next time, add clear next steps in the slides.”
“It would’ve been great to walk through the journey as one big group instead of breaking out.”
Impact & Next Steps
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Created an ongoing Tribe communication channel in Microsoft Teams to maintain cross-functional collaboration.
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Feedback was shared with leadership, leading to future follow-up workshops to deepen role clarity.
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Strengthened interdepartmental collaboration, particularly between UX, Marketing, and Brokers.
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Highlighted critical blockers (e.g., manual payment processing issue) that needed to be addressed in future planning.