--- title: "Liaison - the spy you’ll love to send to other teams" description: "Liaisons are a good coordination model to use when you need people to have better context with other parts of the organization. Learn more about how to apply this pattern." url: "https://www.rubick.com/liaison-model/" --- # Liaison - the spy you'll love to send to other teams October 6, 2021 by Jade Rubick [#coordination-models](https://www.rubick.com/tags/coordination-models/) [#coordination-models-team](https://www.rubick.com/tags/coordination-models-team/) [#communication](https://www.rubick.com/tags/communication/) [#information-flow](https://www.rubick.com/tags/information-flow/) Today, we’ll talk about the use of Liaisons. ![Liaison](https://www.rubick.com/_astro/liaison.DoeoS-JY_2f3wTj.webp) ## What is a liaison? A liaison is a person who serves as a coordinator with another team or group of teams. They attend relevant meetings, and share context in both directions. For example, product marketing has a dependency on engineering, product, and design. Product marketing needs to know many things to market to customers: - When the team will deliver the feature. - What benefits the feature provides. - How the team talks about the feature. - What terms the team is using. - What the feature will look like. - How the feature will fit into the existing offering. A liaison can be very effective in this situation. You attach a product marketing person to a team or set of teams. They attend meetings and learn the context they need. And they also share that context back with their organization. ## When to use liaisons A liaison is one of the best [coordination models](https://www.rubick.com/coordination-models/) to use when you meet these constraints: - **You are coordinating with another part of the organization**. - **That part of the organization comprises a team or set of teams**. - **You believe the liaison will be stable**. They can be associated with a team or set of teams and that won’t need to change for a long time. - **Your need for context is more than minimal**. If you can replace a liaison with notes from a meeting or an email, you don’t need a liaison. - **They can get that context from meetings**. If the meetings aren’t sharing a lot of context, it’s wasteful to have a liaison. - **You won’t exceed the [rule of eight](https://www.rubick.com/the-rule-of-eight-for-strong-decision-making-meetings/)**. Attaching a liaison adds a person to the meetings they attend. You are adding a cost to the meeting and making it more complex. If the meeting gets too big, you have to restructure the meeting or choose another model. - **There is a natural way in which your people fit into other teams’ meetings**. You should have a direct need for context. You are misusing this model if you sprinkle liaisons in many places. If you feel a need for liaisons everywhere, you might have other problems. That can be a sign your company has bad information flow. Look for signs there is something structural at work. One of the advantages of using a liaison is that it is inexpensive. Using a liaison only requires a few meetings a week for one person. You can scale liaisons as the organization grows. For example, our product marketing department might assign a liaison per product line. These product lines map to engineering teams or organizations. When the company introduces a new product line, you hire a new product marketing person. This person is then attached to the new engineering group. ## When using this model - **Make sure people understand what the liaison is doing**. Using our example, many engineers don’t understand product marketing. They will have no idea why a product marketing person is at the meeting. When you add a liaison to a meeting, tell everyone what their needs are. Explain why they are there and what information they need. - **Use the existing hierarchy if you can**. When you map your liaisons to other departments, use the existing hierarchy. If you don’t, you make the organization complex. I have seen situations where there are three or four mappings and hierarchies at the same time. Using the existing hierarchy reduces complexity during reorgs. ## Liaison versus other coordination models A liaison is a limited version of the [embedded model](https://www.rubick.com/embedded-model/). When you need deep context, embed someone instead. When it makes sense to work together, prefer the embedded model. If your need for context isn’t significant, use a liaison instead. When you want someone to be always available, a Rotation can be preferable. Rotations build less context. They also share the burden of being available better. A collection of liaisons from many places forms a “Centralized Liaison”. For example, you might have each team send their technical lead to form a technical leadership group. The technical leadership group then shares information and coordinates with each other. My advice: - Use liaisons with product marketing. - Use [embeds](https://www.rubick.com/embedded-model/) or liaisons with security. - For support teams, use liaisons. Embedded support engineers would be a good experiment. For engineering teams, engineering Rotations with the support liaison create a natural pair. This pair can triage and sometimes solve customer problems together. ## Next steps Any important advice I missed? I love [feedback](https://www.rubick.com/contact). If you liked this post, [subscribe](https://www.rubick.com/subscribe/) to hear about future posts! ## Coordination models Liaisons are just one of many [coordination models](https://www.rubick.com/coordination-models/). Coordination models give you a menu of choices to choose from when solving your leadership coordination issues. Image by [Couleur](https://pixabay.com/users/couleur-1195798/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=3365574) from [Pixabay](https://pixabay.com/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=3365574) I like to share what I’ve learned. If you’re running into something like this at your company, [I’m happy to talk](https://www.rubick.com/work-with-me/).