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Chapter 7 Business Interfaces Drive Collaboration • 103

creates suboptimization. This dilemma needs to be solved. Through
the concept of business interface metrics it is not hard to build the
bridge between optimization and responsibility. Organizations have
hierarchies in place, and the two business domains in our example
report into the same manager. Performance accountability and respon-
sibility is not something that can be delegated to lower management
in this model. Next to target setting, performance monitoring, and allo-
cating resources, fostering collaboration is the most important senior
management task. It is not the job of senior management to be the best
financial expert, sales professional, or IT guru; it is their job to make
their team run successfully. In other words, the collaboration of their
direct reports in the business interface is their responsibility. See
Figure 7.2.
Obviously, business interfaces cross multiple domains, and therefore
multiple levels of management that oversee the various business
domains. The traditional management structure, with its various levels
of management takes care of managing the business interfaces in exactly
the same way. Where a middle manager manages the business inter-
faces within his or her span of control, the business interfaces crossing
that span of control are then being managed by the manager of that

F igur e 7.2
Collaboration Is a Management Responsibility

Management

Business Domain Business Domain
Cost or revenue Cost or revenue
Quality Quality
Speed Speed

Business
Interface
Alignment
Cost or revenue,
quality, speed