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I’ve talked about interfaces in earlier blog posts (#84, #89, and #94). I had a few additional insights that are worth sharing.

If interfaces break down (between marketing and sales, between sales and finance, between customer and vendor, and between engineering and product marketing), there may be more than one reason at play:

• Different world view. If both parties have a different view of the problem to be solved and a different view of their roles in solving those problems, you can expect nothing but communication gaps.
• Different processes and methods. Or, no process and method has been defined. Structured interactions may sound restricting, but it actually speeds up processes and outputs.
• Different levels of capabilities. Staying on top of industry best practices and tuning the solution to the problem needs to be an ongoing effort. If one of the parties knows a lot more than the other party, communication gaps are bound to happen.

List specific points for each of the above and communicate hard until each point has been addressed. Clarity should be non-negotiable. Once a common understanding has been reached, there is more than one way to solve a problem. Pick the solution that benefits the customer the most.