Working in a team is hard. Everyone comes with their own experience, expertise, and opinions. How is anything supposed to get done? We've spent three years working together to build a startup from scratch. Together, we identified three of the most important lessons we've learned about interdisciplinary teamwork. 1. Identify your shared vision and values. 2. Practise open communication. 3. Make - and stick to - clear plans. However, we've all taken different things away from these lessons. That's why each of the following lessons is accompanied by our own individual elaborations. Our different perspectives make us a stronger team. Note: This document is formatted for double-sided printing on A4 paper, to be read in codex form. For the intended reading experience, download this file and read in a PDF reader.

1. Achieving Success in an
Interdisciplinary Team
Leah Henrickson, William Jephcote, Rhys Comissiong

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5. Leah
The Academic
Identify your shared vision and values.
Practise open communication.
Make - and stick to - clear plans.
Working in a team is hard.
Everyone comes with their own experience, expertise, and
opinions. How is anything supposed to get done?
We've spent three years working together to build a start-
up from scratch. Together, we identified three of the most
important lessons we've learned about interdisciplinary
teamwork.
1.
2.
3.
However, we've all taken different things away from these
lessons. That's why each of the following lessons is
accompanied by our own individual elaborations.
Our different perspectives make us a stronger team.
Rhys
The Engineer
Will
The Designer

6. Lesson 1
Identify
your shared
vision and
values.

7. The Designer
It's fairly common for there to be big egos and big personalities in
start-up contexts. People often struggle to agree on ideas and
directions, leading to breakdowns in team cohesion. When forming a
team, I learnt the importance of having honest conversations to find
out the underlying issues behind disagreement. It's crucial to
understand each other's life ambitions and motivations before
assembling a team and committing to a project.
The Engineer
The highest priority in meetings should be to establish team
alignment. Compromises are inevitable, but there should be
understanding of what the rest of the team is up to and why. With
different expertise in interdisciplinary teams, some ideas may seem
competing, or may be inconsistent with the product. This can lead to
divided teams, making things political and slowing progress. To
prevent misalignment, encourage all members of the team to share
their thoughts as to what the product is as early on in the project as
possible, and identify any gaps in understanding.
The Academic
It’s great to have so many areas of expertise represented in one team.
However, everyone will come with their own ideas, expectations, and
ways of working, and it can be difficult to get everyone moving in the
same direction. Early on, meet with your entire team to establish
exactly what you’re trying to achieve. You don’t need to agree on
how to achieve that thing yet - just decide on a common goal or two.
Then, set some ground rules (e.g. meetings no longer than an hour,
who leads certain tasks). Review these goals and rules periodically.
Lesson 1: Identify your shared vision and values.

8. Lesson 2
Practise
open
communication.

9. The Academic
It can be awkward and uncomfortable to share your ideas with other
people. There will probably be at least some miscommunication and
disagreement, especially if those people come from very different
backgrounds than you. But your ideas are valuable and worth sharing.
Just don’t expect your ideas to be the right ones all the time. Be open
to criticism and debate, and really try to listen to your teammates -
they have valuable ideas too. Ask questions when you don’t
understand. These conversations may slow things down a bit, but
your team and product will be stronger for them.
The Designer
When experts from different subject areas get together, discipline-
specific terms that no one else actually understands can get thrown
around, leading to confusion. Foster a culture that strives for a shared
understanding by using non-expert language. Something that I've
found helps with this is being personally close to teammates. You can
speak honestly, being both open to criticism and unafraid to criticise
others’ ideas. Everyone can trust that the criticism is not targeted
personally, but only at ideas.
The Engineer
Conversations can be a very inefficient way of communicating.
Although your teammates may say a lot, interpretations of what's
being said can be vastly different. Try collaboratively creating
diagrams, graphics, and documentation so that gaps in understanding
can be identified and corrected. Promote a safe environment where
team members are not personally criticised for their ideas. If
collaborators don’t feel safe to share ideas, do not expect any
innovation to occur.
Lesson 2: Practise open communication.

10. Lesson 3
Make - and
stick to -
clear
plans.

11. The Academic
If you don’t make it clear precisely what people need to do, and by
when, things won’t get done. While it’s important to be flexible in
your schedule (life happens!), setting both short- and long-term goals
with your team will give you clear milestones to work towards.
Ensure that all goals have suggested dates for completion. In your
meetings, review your progress in working towards achieving these
goals, and set clear actions for everyone at the end of each meeting.
Have everyone review their actions aloud before everyone heads
out, so the whole team is on the same page.
The Designer
Making sure meetings run smoothly and on time is very difficult to
do, but try your best. As always, practice makes perfect! Some helpful
things to try are: setting an agenda in advance, moving on if a
conversation seems like it’s not going anywhere (making a note to
come back to that point later), and always setting and assigning
actions to build accountability. To move forward with the problem
that you're tackling, make sure that aims and long-term goals are
well-defined and understood.
The Engineer
All projects include uncertainty. It's great to plan, but in the early
parts of a project there are still many unknowns. Something is likely
to cause an issue and force you to change direction. I suggest
working in a three-month cycle, setting achievable and action-
oriented goals that demonstrate clear progress to the team. You will
need this for motivation. Get feedback from users quickly and you'll
figure out which direction to go in. Your final aim must be based on
the problem you are solving.
Lesson 3: Make - and stick to - clear plans.

12. Finally...
Here are
some other
things we've
learned.

13. The Academic
Sometimes working in an interdisciplinary team can be great, and
sometimes it can suck. I love opportunities to learn from others about
things I didn’t even know I didn’t know. However, I also love getting
things done quickly and efficiently, and that can be hard to do when
you can’t seem to find common ground. Just accept that you’ll often
need to compromise, or even throw your own ideas out the window.
And, quite frankly, there will be times when others’ ideas will actually
be better choices. Really listen to - and learn from - your teammates.
The Designer
Over the duration of this project, my perceptions of good design
work have changed. I've realised that serving as a ‘Design Facilitator’
to include my team in the design process has worked so much better
than my just being the ‘Design Expert’. I've learned that involving the
team early on builds a collective sense of ownership in a project. Also,
don’t be afraid to try new things! These things won’t always go
perfectly, but aim for continuous improvement by having
retrospective group chats. In these conversations, go through what
you should start, stop, and continue doing.
The Engineer
One of the most common causes of project failure is poor
communication. The current consensus is that interdisciplinary teams
improve the quality of products developed, but what's less discussed
is how interdisciplinarity can lead to inefficiency in communication. If
you want the benefits of an interdisciplinary team, I encourage you to
critically assess your own ability to work within a team, and to
identify skills to improve: for example, self-awareness to recognise
when you need to learn more about a topic for effective dialogue
with teammates from different disciplines.
Other things we've learned.

16. Henrickson, Jephcote, Comissiong (2022)