Turn conflict into benefit

General Motors founder and CEO Alfred Sloan has publicly expressed dissatisfaction with the company's leadership team's obsession with consistency.

"I think we're here to reach a decision through a heated debate," he once said, "so I would suggest that you defer further discussion of this matter to the next meeting, so that we can have More time to disagree may help us better understand the content of the decision."

Actively encourage conflict

enables better decision

Same as early General Motors Likewise, most organizations today strive to avoid conflict. It is often assumed that intra-organizational strife weakens a business and wastes precious time that could be used to get work done more efficiently. In short, the verbal arguments that arise in the everyday life of an organization are often seen as a symptom of dysfunctional functioning—is that true?

When leaders habitually avoid conflict, people often perceive them as reluctant to take a stand and afraid to take responsibility. Avoiding conflict can make employees question the courage and determination of company leaders. Unresolved disputes will lead to serious damage to employee morale and disputes. In addition, avoiding conflict can also make enterprises lose great opportunities to solve practical problems, settle disputes and make decisions, which is not conducive to the development of enterprises.

Encouraging debate to deepen understanding -- exposing issues from multiple perspectives, looking at issues from multiple perspectives, etc. -- is now a required course that organizations are implementing. Controversy and conflict are the food for "learning organizations," which nurture imbalances that lead to positive change. Bringing conflict into the discussion challenges complacency and inertia.

Despite the benefits of conflict, most leaders are hesitant about it. They are reluctant to pierce the nest and cause controversy, which will lead to internal blame and hurt each other's feelings. So it's a dilemma! Leaders themselves are debating the need to advocate and support debate within the organization!

Take Emerson, for example, which has a strong track record of financial performance. Emerson went through an exhausting process before successfully turning adversarial planning into a core competency for the company.

With more than 60 operating divisions at Emerson, each with its own branded product or service, coordinated planning is especially important. The planning process is an ongoing process of communication about how Emerson can gain cost advantages by changing the rules of the game, and how to reconcile the relationship between company size, department and personnel mix, and operational efficiency.

The departmental planning meeting is held in a quiet area outside the city. The meeting usually begins with a speech from CEO David Farr on the state and direction of the company. Subsequently, the management team of each department will make their own presentations, the topic will mainly focus on the department's strategic marketing and sales plan. The topics discussed throughout the meeting mainly focused on the company's performance in the previous year and the development strategy for the coming year.

While the procedures followed by Emerson are extremely common, the company's planning process has its own idiosyncrasies. The presentations made by the management teams of the various departments were interrupted from time to time by the management team of the company, which fully demonstrated that the latter had carried out detailed research and in-depth understanding of the plans of each department, and also provided detailed slides and diagrams of the presentations of each department. additional materials. Criticize one after the other: "I don't understand how you came to such a conclusion", or "I don't understand how the two graphs support each other", etc.

These questions are by no means vexatious. For this process to work effectively, the management team needs to be both well-prepared and hyper-alert, and must pay full attention to the numbers and nuances the day has to offer!

Follow Two Principles

Avoid Negative Impacts

The atmosphere of debate in planning meetings is a legacy of the company’s former CEO, Chuck Knight, who He led Emerson for 25 years and now serves as the company's chairman. This competitive tension is one of the elements that "helps us make better decisions," says Paul Mcknight, Emerson's vice president of organizational planning. When questioned, you have to be tit for tat."

For example, when a divisional VP says "the competition is ahead of us, so we have to add a new product," they may be quickly questioned. They must then defend their recommendations based on competitive analysis, or tell everyone whether they have considered other alternative responses. Another tactic employed by the company's senior leadership team is to get other managers in the department to actively participate in discussions by asking questions such as "Do you really agree with what your boss is making?"

While such questions are often aggressive and demanding, the following two principles help focus meetings on sound corporate strategy and high-quality decision-making. One is that personal attacks are not allowed, and the other is that discussions must lead to action proposals. Both opposing camps need to move towards this goal. Compared with other company's planning meetings, one of the characteristics of Emerson's planning meetings is that they are both contributing and rewarding, more tangible, and based on data and research.

George Cesaretti of the University of Washington collaborates with Emerson on a leadership development program. He noted that there was a potential "downside" to this offensive discussion. Although the first principle has always been valid, confrontation and conflict are not so easily contained. When people engage in heated arguments or stand firm in defense of their arguments, it is often difficult to properly control their emotions.

Obviously, planning meetings like Emerson's require further practice and may be subject to criticism. Participants must restrain their egoistic thoughts and cultivate their "cheeky" in order to face such a bold meeting calmly. But the best way for managers to prepare for such planning meetings is to develop a communication strategy that includes rigorous analysis, ample supporting data, and clearly articulated reasoning.

Helping newcomers adapt

dialogue rather than confrontation

One particular challenge businesses face when newcomers attend planning meetings is the discipline to develop planning. The problem is that new members may only see confrontation, but ignore the underlying commitment and goodwill, not understanding that these disputes are in order to reach informed decisions that benefit everyone.

Emerson developed a well-coordinated leadership development program with strong executive support that successfully increased discipline in collaborative planning meetings. Participants in the project include both newly promoted managers and those newly recruited. The first event was a "quiet meditation" for several days, which involved the company's leadership team in addition to 35-40 executives.

An important goal of these meditations is to provide new faces with as many opportunities as possible to meet informally with senior management, and to make senior management more human, so that in future planning meetings, when everyone sees you It's a bit of a personal feeling. Top executives make the most of their breaks, or take advantage of the pre-meal social break, to communicate and get to know as many new people as possible.

One strategy that is effective in helping incoming managers adjust to the atmosphere of a planning meeting is to selectively invite them to planning meetings when they are not yet able to take on an important role. By giving them the opportunity to attend (and be a member of the discussion) and see for themselves how their immediate bosses interact with their own bosses, these new hires will become more comfortable with the process. Over time, companies will ask them to participate more actively.

Emerson's fundamental commitment to the planning process for managing this adversarial dialogue is to give full trust and confidence in the helmsman of the various departments that the company appoints. As Paul McKnight said, "If the meeting room is filled with the right people, we're going to win. And after we've gone through the planning process, everyone leaves the room and it definitely makes the plan work. ."

Both McKnight and Serrareti point to another important feature of planning meetings: All participants must either tell the truth, or be prudent, withholding certain key points so as not to invite unnecessary criticism. gist. The planning process is less about decision-making politics, and more about publicly obtaining agreed-upon information, which is then used in decision-making. In the long run, those managers who can "fly" in the planning room are credible and dependable managers.

Emerson believes that managers who speak up can make planning meetings richer and more inclusive. Developing new ideas and overturning old ones requires thorough research, and these are the most important leadership qualities!

Discuss the contention of a hundred schools of thought

Act as one group

Emerson understands that planning is a systemic challenge to conventional wisdom and conventional practice. As CEO David Farr puts it, "Planning is a dynamic process: We rework our plans every year, and discussions have no off-limits." That puts Emerson well ahead of its rivals. "We've been leading our own industry -- we're the industry drivers."

After a high-level consensus is reached through a well-designed process of information gathering, questioning, and debate, decisions are implemented with firm support from the entire company. . A hundred schools of thought can contend for discussion, but action must be united.

Planning is for action, and this type of gunpowder discussion is the foundation of the planning process, essential to addressing common concerns and alleviating concerns. Difficulties and challenges raised verbally by senior leaders are not difficult to understand. They do so intentionally in order to obtain sufficient information to support decision-making. This is exactly how Alfred Sloan explains what is necessary for effective decision-making.

Therefore, the goal of leadership meetings like this at Emerson is to reach consensus through debate. As long as they are in the conference room, everyone has the right to make decisions. Involving all stakeholders and making decisions collectively helps to make Emerson an "impeccable organization" so that implementation of decisions is not hindered by residual doubts, those who try to say "I told you so" People like "do" won't help either.

In any organization, opposing views and differences of opinion are an intellectual contest that benefits the organization as a whole. Leaders should see this as a stage play, and be the director themselves. The early task was to pick the right actors for the role. The protagonist is often self-introduced, and the leader must also involve others, especially when someone disagrees with certain dominant views.

To wrestle such an antagonistic debate over a long period of time and make it happen, you need skilled process management skills! Otherwise, it can lead to inescapable conundrums. To foster productive conflict, leaders must appear calm and restrained, applying business-creation strategies rather than advocating armed conflict.

The art of finding a balance between conflict and harmony is what leaders of dynamic organizations strive for. In most organizations, there is still a lot of potential to properly accommodate different perspectives, after all, diversity is tolerated within most companies.

By its very nature, well-managed organizational conflict is ultimately about results and performance, not personnel infighting and corporate politics. In principle, leaders would agree to conflict and debate, but would not want their positions to be challenged. But how can you turn a blind eye to the benefits of debating important matters, proposals, or key decisions?

Original excerpt from The Leader as Communicator by Robert Mai and Alan Akerson with permission. The author registered copyright in 2003. The book is published by AMACOM, a division of the American Management Association in New York, all rights reserved. Translated by Li Jian.