Right Problem, Right Team, Right Time

The centralized enablement function within a national R&D center faced a strategic challenge: Leaders knew they had a high-stakes customer group that was struggling—but the enablement function itself was fragmented. Customers said it felt like working with five separate teams, not a unified function. And from the inside, they weren’t aligned on how best to help or which moves to make.

The function’s leadership knew that to modernize how the organization worked, they needed to change their own operations. They weren’t meeting customer needs; and they weren’t effectively addressing customer problems that caused downstream challenges for the rest of the company. But how to evolve—meaningfully, effectively, quickly—was unclear.

So The Ready helped them zoom out. They needed a new approach to strategy. One that clarified priorities and equipped them to act. From there, it became easier to identify where they could first focus collective efforts: A high-stakes customer group was facing operational risk.

The department had gone through years of disruptions—and over time, breakdowns compounded and reduced the team’s ability to understand the issues occurring on their watch. Making matters worse: Department leaders couldn’t agree on what “good” looked like or how to measure progress.

There was a big strategic problem, urgency to address it, and clear understanding that solving the challenge required a different kind of cross-functional collaboration.

The challenge surfaced by the enablement function—helping a high-stakes department regain clarity and meet assurance standards—was ripe for a specific intervention: Mission-based teams (MBTs) are elementally different from the ad hoc groups most organizations spin up when trying to solve cross-functional problems, because they’re:

• Laser-focused on the customer: MBTs focus on end-users with validated problems — whether that’s employees, customers, or a strategic business partner.
• Time-boxed and result-driven: MBTs form for specific missions, typically delivering solutions or learnings in six months or less and then disbanding.
• Imbued with clear decision-making power: MBTs have the authority to make bold moves within defined guardrails.

We guided the enablement function through scoping, launching, and supporting their first MBT. By teaming in this way, the function was able to shift its approach to cross-functional work and problem-solving.

Reactivity and individual heroics were no longer the default mode; now, they could bring their intelligence and effort—proactively, collectively, strategically—to better serve the department in need.

This MBT hit the ground running because of the conditions established from the jump:

• It was intentionally designed with cross-functional capabilities (e.g., data, process improvement) and operated with dedicated time, clear decision rights, and coaching support. For the first time, roles were filled based on mission fit—not who was available.
• The MBT first conducted discovery interviews with the department in question to understand systemic issues. The MBT spent weeks mapping pain points, which led to the realization that what the customer thought they needed wouldn’t solve the underlying problem. Energy was focused on high-impact efforts, not general busyness.
• Instead of treating the mission as a side-of-desk task easily derailed by competing priorities, the MBT was accountable for owning the problem end-to-end.