Strategy #1 Decode the organisational culture
Conflict is a time-honoured way for people to get more of what they need or want. Hence, it is not surprising that many organisations place a premium on conflict suppression and avoidance.
Conflict is also a much-used route for introducing necessary improvements. Therefore, many highly competitive organisational cultures reward aggressive conflict behaviour.
Other cultures preach collaboration but practice avoidance and accommodation.
Each culture possesses a subtle set of rules regarding how their people should behave and what will happen to them if they do not. Based on these rules, the culture leans towards one of these five responses:
- Avoidance
- Accommodation
- Aggression
- Compromise
- Collaboration
There are contexts in which each of these responses can be appropriate and useful.
Collaboration requires the highest level of skill because it requires finding a way of integrating a concern for people with a concern for results and discovering a better way that serves both.
But consider what the culture would be like if it always responded in only one of these five ways.
Learning organisations can discover the opportunities in conflict, creatively solve their problems and continuously find ways to improve.
The bottom line is to become conscious of your organisation’s culture. If you fail to manage the culture, the culture will manage you.
The capability you are looking for is to be able to discuss disagreements publicly and not to allow them to be swept under the carpet.
There is always wisdom in conflict. It far too valuable to be ignored.
Return to home.
Read about mediating the future.
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