Interfaces

As soon as two or more people have to work together, the problem of communication arises. A major aspect of effective management is managing the lines of communication within your business.

In very small development teams, it's usually possible to just turn to your colleague and ask him a question directly. As teams get larger, this becomes less workable: too many people talking to each other make for a very noisy and distracting environment. A lead designer can't design if he's being constantly assailed by department heads to discuss this or that trifling detail.

Viewing a business structure in terms of interfaces is a useful analogy.

The interfaces in your business are the lines of communication between employees, as well as those to the outside world and other businesses. Managing and maintaining your business' interfaces are your responsibility. Get these wrong and faulty lines of communication will introduce "noise" into the system. Noise is interference of some form—just like in a TV or radio signal. This can be concrete interference or abstract interference.

Concrete Interference

Concrete interference is usually visible and tangible. It represents the more obvious communications problems, such as people having to shout across an office because there is no internal messaging system.

Another example is environmental obstacles: an office that's too hot (or cold) to work in comfortably will affect performance and morale.

Abstract Interference

This type of interference is usually not clearly visible. It manifests itself in the form of effects with no obvious cause. For example, morale might be gradually dropping for no visible reason. Chances are that there's an unsubstantiated rumor about the company going around the office. This type of interference can have an insidious effect on productivity, but can usually be countered by improving the flow of information between management and the people at the front lines. (Of course, if the company's stated plans make no sense to your employees, this can also have a detrimental effect. This is why good communication skills are required of all managers.)

Interference of any kind will cause disruption. Your job is to eliminate all interference—all noise—from your business processes. The more transparent the communication, the easier it is for everyone to see what's going on. People are naturally wary of information-hiding or obfuscation. If you're deliberately interfering with your employees' jobs, they won't thank you for it. Morale will fall. Good people will leave. More na ve people will stay a little longer, but ultimately, no one will stay to the bitter end.

Ultimately, all business management can be boiled down to interface design—or more specifically, communication. You have to know how to communicate with your own colleagues and employees. Your business needs to communicate with its customers—both game players and publishers. Your business needs to communicate with marketing people, magazine reviewers, Web site-building fans, new job applicants, and so on. If you're not good at talking to people, run, don't walk, away from any and all management roles: you won't enjoy them. Even famous musicians hire PR people and agents when they can't face talking to people themselves.