The focus on interfaces ensures important tasks do not fall in the cracks between conventional organizations. It improves the dialogue at those points where different groups meet and difficulties are most likely to arise.

Keep in mind the conversations you seek to encourage. It will help you identify the key interfaces.

List the obvious and important interfaces. Do not worry about completeness. Start in fertile ground, where people are most likely to help you.

Then, clarify the aims of each interface.

When any group comes together, for whatever reason, they begin to form a community. Encourage contributors to name their interface, define its aims, build a common vocabulary, share stories and develop a history.

Every interface must have one or more aim or it will not survive, because its members have no common ground. However aims are often unclear or misunderstood.

Asking simple questions to clarify the aims of an interface helps build a shared sense of purpose, encourages everyone to understand what is going on, and confirms the results needed.

Next, raise issues.

Issues are the challenges we must surmount to achieve the aims of an interface. They demand our attention. We find our way by resolving them.

Yala issues are likely to be more fundamental and less tractable that items in a conventional checklist, to do list or IT issue tracker.

Recognizing such issues will help people to elevate concerns safely, discuss them openly, assess them correctly and respond appropriately.  

Overcoming issues reinforces the bonds between the people who work together at an interface.

Finally, invite views.

Just as leaves grow on a twig, so the views in a Yala are specific to an issue.

We need to find a better way to hear and understand the messages that surround us if we are to solve many problems we face today. These messages often include “subjective” perceptions such as others’ thoughts, feelings, beliefs, hopes and fears. We will never get to know such things unless people tell us about them.  This is especially important in a virtual world where we cannot read body language or pick up non-verbal cues.

So legitimize a wide range of views to aid the frank exchange of dissimilar ideas. Diverse contributions will generate better solutions.