The Cross-Functional Primary Team
Unite functional leaders around one customer experience and one roadmap
- Difficulty
- Advanced
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 98%
The primary-team model makes the heads of product, design, creative, and marketing one another's closest operating peers. They work in the same room, use one roadmap, and evaluate the combined experience that reaches the customer rather than optimizing separate departmental outputs. Each leader retains clear functional accountability, but overlapping decisions are worked through collectively. A designated executive decision maker and editor resolves ambiguity while protecting the creative process. The model increases speed by moving important conversations upstream: teams identify conflicts, dependencies, and experience gaps together instead of discovering them during handoffs. Smaller delivery pods can still operate, but their work remains connected to the integrated leadership group and the company's complete customer journey.
Origin
Extracted from Marketing Against The Grain, where Hiroki Asai described Airbnb's unconventional functional organization and closely integrated leadership team.
Core principles
- 01Customers experience one company, not separate functions
- 02Functional leaders must treat one another as their primary peer group
- 03Creative, product, design, and marketing decisions belong in the same conversation
- 04A single decision maker protects momentum when alignment breaks down
How to run it
- 1
Form the primary team
Bring together the leaders of product, design, creative, and marketing as a standing peer group. Make collective delivery, rather than departmental activity, their shared responsibility.
Pro tip Include every function that materially shapes what the customer sees or experiences.
Watch out A nominal committee without sustained leader participation will recreate the same silos.
- 2
Define accountabilities
State what each leader owns, where responsibilities overlap, and where another function has final authority. Use these boundaries to support candid collaboration without constant territorial conflict.
Pro tip Document both decision rights and legitimate areas for cross-functional questioning.
Watch out Shared work does not mean that every person owns every decision.
- 3
Create one roadmap
Put product development, design, communications, creative, and marketing activity onto one roadmap. Surface dependencies before individual teams lock their plans.
Pro tip Organize the roadmap around customer-facing outcomes rather than departmental deliverables.
Watch out Separate calendars will undermine alignment even when leaders agree conceptually.
- 4
Work side by side
Place the leaders and relevant teams together during important planning and review periods. Resolve disagreements against the same artifacts and customer journey.
Pro tip Use a dedicated project room for major releases.
Watch out Digital proximity alone may leave people discussing different mental pictures.
- 5
Assign the editor
Designate one leader to act as final decision maker and editor when the team cannot converge. That person should understand both creative judgment and operational constraints.
Pro tip Let the team work through the problem before invoking the tie-breaker.
Watch out An editor who states every answer too early can suppress useful perspectives.
In the wild
Airbnb's creative, marketing, product, and design heads operate as peers and spend extensive time together. They coordinate product work and marketing rather than passing completed work from one function to another.
→ The company reported its fastest product and marketing velocity, including more than 400 guest-side enhancements in a year.
The primary team aligned the product, host communications, host pre-briefing, marketing, and press around the Co-host Network launch.
→ Customers and hosts encountered a coordinated release instead of disconnected departmental rollouts.
Common mistakes
Protecting the functional fiefdom
Leaders optimize their own team's workload or success instead of the customer's complete experience. The primary team must reward the integrated outcome.
Confusing collaboration with consensus
Cross-functional peers can debate extensively without making a decision. Preserve a clearly identified final editor or tie-breaker.
Aligning ideas but not calendars
Conceptual agreement is insufficient when functions execute on unrelated schedules. Operational dates and dependencies must live on the same roadmap.
Is it for you?
Best for
It is best for organizations coordinating product, design, creative, and marketing around consequential releases.
Not ideal for
It is not ideal when leaders cannot dedicate substantial time to shared decisions or accept collective accountability.
From the transcript
“That's kind of what I call the primary team, is the head of all the functions.”
“And the way we work on one product roadmap together, the team is really thinking about all functions of how we bring something out into…”
“you really do need to have a single decision maker that's a champion of this process and is both left and right brain to be…”
From the episode
The $86B Marketing Playbook Behind Airbnb w/ Global CMO Hiroki Asai
Hiroki Asai