The Coalition Of Enemies

When Boston University organized a leadership session with MBA alumni this year, one of the activities was to play cards. Ok, the cards were from the Center of Creative Leadership. They depicted different themes: a caring gardener, collaborative mountain climbers, creative artists, a happy family, a team of well-organized workers, a group of thieves, connecting rivers, etc. Pick a first card to illustrate your present status and a second one to represent your aspirations. Let me depart from this interesting exercise and focus on the one card that I chose as my first pick: two medieval armies turned their fight towards a third enemy. Big companies are highly politicized and conflict-prone when seen from the inside. Sometimes they appear to be a Coalition of Enemies. In this post I'll try to explain why it is so, and hopefully I'll be able to distill a few good tips on how to navigate successfully through conflict and politics.

Much like cars that have complex designs, corporations have complex organizations. A car has an engine designed to deliver acceleration and speed, at the same time it has well designed brakes and electronic systems to stop quickly. Like cars, corporations have organizations that have built-in conflictive functions, checks and balances if you wish. Some of these company-wide conflicts are well known: regions want to have more autonomy, salesmen seek volume, corporate wants to keep prices high and cut costs, and manufacturing grumbles against engineering who grumbles against quality assurance who in turn... you get the picture. Those broad conflicts trickle within the organization: VPs represent different perspectives, middle-managers take example on their function-head and bring the conflict one level down, and so forth by replication until it reaches every individual in the organization. At the individual level this overlays with a crossroad of conflicts due to overlaps in responsibilities, career aspirations, personal incompatibilities, etc. Then another dynamics takes effect: who can see the conflicts can also exploit the conflicts. If a child can play mom against dad at home, imagine what smart employees or managers can do in complex organizations!

So, how to deal with conflicts in your organization?
1 - First recognize natural conflicts. In doing so, remember that more often than not conflicts are good. In GE our most recent HR initiative is called “Boundaryless Collaboration” and has attributes like “Embraces Constructive Conflict” and at the same time “Leverages Teamwork”. Step-back and try to identify the natural biases of your surroundings. Create the car-like analogy that best matches your organization. Get your company context.
2 - Be skeptical. People will come to you with pre-packaged explanations of what is at play. It can be based on unhealed conflicts, it can be an attempt to play the system and many times it is a defense mechanism (“something is not working and it is not my fault, there is a conflict between…”).
3 - Gather information and perform interviews. People will explain the trade-offs they see, and their behavior and actions will make sense from their perspective. Things will fall into place. I like to write down simple “who thinks what?” two-column tables. It’s simple and powerful
4 - Judge: flag the forces that are good and healthy and segregate them from those that are bad and ill. This will help you drive your actions.
5 - Attack the ill forces. Tackle them; do it on the spot, every time you encounter them. Be courageous; don’t hide behind the “politically correct” and the “benefit of the doubt”. Remember that you always lead by the example first, and people are watching you.
6 - Build coalitions. There is no shame in that, as long as the purpose of the coalition is honorable. Work with your peers, align your teams, and manage up. Build common ground and start from shared values or aspirations.
7 - Communicate, communicate, and communicate. People in your team will understand better the decisions that are not to their liking. They will align and work more effectively. If you are in the engine, you’ll be happier to understand why the driver is braking…communicate!
8 - Close the loop. Continuously check your beliefs, confirm your assumptions, re-interview the stakeholders, re-do the analysis and adjust your actions accordingly. What if you are wrong? Reading this older post on decision and uncertainty can help you managing that.

If you want to dig this deeper, I recommend reading an HBR classic: How Management Teams Can Have a Good Fight.

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