Breaking down the language barrier between IT and marketing

The contrasts between IT and marketing can be a rich source of creativity if handled right

I started working closely with marketing people about 12 years ago, when the dot-com boom was driving things. Whenever we assembled a team, we spent the first week working out how to talk to each other. Throughout each project we argued endlessly about how to do things. It was horribly inefficient (one reason dot coms burned so much cash).

These days, working together is the norm. Certainly any web or e-commerce project will need a team that combines technical, editorial, design, merchandising and other skills - skills that will be found in either IT or marketing.

IT and marketing have become a complementary pair. They have a blend of vision and attention to detail, customer insight and product development prowess, that naturally go together.

Yet so often our teams fall apart along departmental lines. Why is this?

For a start, I'm not sure our trend towards "professionalism" is really helping us. For example, I like ITIL. A lot of useful learning is distilled into the model, but it is inherently IT-led. Saying to marketeers "This is a best practice because ITIL says it is" will only get blank stares. We need organisational practices, not departmental ones.

I also suspect that IT and marketing are divided by their common concerns. When you look at what drives people in the two departments, you often find very similar questions. What is our strategy for the long term? How will we deliver this while also delivering immediate projects? How do we support day-to-day operations as we do this? Who decides on the priorities? With so much in common, we can either work together or tread on each other's toes. Generally, it's the toes that suffer.

In addition, the two departments draw on different personality types. Use whatever instrument you like - Myers-Briggs, Personality and Preference Inventory and so on - and you'll almost certainly find that IT and marketing people cluster in very different areas.

This makes it hard to connect with each other. But it also means we can do more when we work together. As Virginia Satir said, "We connect through our similarities; we grow through our differences."

What can we do about this?

I wish I had an easy answer. But it seems pretty clear that we need to invest more in building effective cross-functional teams. Just putting people together in a room - or on a Gantt chart - doesn't create a team. It takes time working together, discussing norms and listening to each other. It might even need some outside facilitation. This does not need to be expensive.

But I would start with listening more: it's amazing what you can learn when you actively listen to people.

Graham Oakes is a technology consultant and author. His book Project Reviews, Assurance and Governance is out now