An assistant city manager recently told me about her frustration with a team she had formed to work on a special project for the city. Their task was to develop solutions to reduce the number of errors in the utility bills sent to customers.

Like many organizational issues, this one was not restricted to one department, so she pulled together a cross-functional team of employees to identify the source(s) of the errors and recommend ways to fix them. These were smart, dedicated folks who had a proven track record of getting the job done.