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Deep
organizational change inevitably produces conflict. Those
who lead change usually try to suppress conflict, with the
goal of keeping the energy positive and the forward
momentum strong.
But our
work at Cambridge Leadership Associates with individuals
from a variety of organizations has shown us that
successfully leading change requires actively using
conflict and even heightening it at strategic moments.
To harness
conflict and turn it into a catalyst for change, implement
the following four practices:
1. BUILD A
CONTAINER TO HOLD THE GROUP TOGETHER.
Our advice to those beginning the work of deep
organizational transformation is to build a safe structure
to hold the group together through the high-pressure days
and weeks ahead. We suggest that leaders think of this
structure as a container, with thick walls to keep heated
conversations from spilling outside and protect the group
from external threat.
For one
global professional services firm we worked with, a series
of no-holds-barred off-sites served as this container.
Each event was devoted to airing questions and concerns
about the change; participants were assured that nothing
was off-limits and no one would suffer repercussions for
speaking out.
2.
LEVERAGE DISSIDENT VOICES.
Sometimes dissidents have acutely valuable ideas. Finding
dissidents and shining a light on them was a key part of
the culture-change strategy put into place by the CEO of a
major US electronics retailer—we’ll call him Simon
Waterson.
Waterson’s
company had thrived for years with highly centralized
decision making: Corporate chose what to sell and how to
sell it. But Waterson recognized that this model stifled
innovation. He had to take an organization committed to
doing things by the book into a new era where innovation
at the store level would be prized.
He knew
that there were a certain number of store general managers
who had always pushed the boundaries to try to do things
their way. They tended to be unpopular with colleagues
because they didn’t play by the rules.
But
Waterson loved them, because their willingness to innovate
in response to local customers’ needs offered a model of
the culture he was seeking to foster.
Waterson
gathered a group of regional vice presidents and store
general managers to visit with several of them and see how
they did things. He also brought a few to headquarters to
present their operating philosophies to others.
Did this
focus on a few renegades create conflict in an
organization that had long prized toeing the line? Yes,
definitely. But it was healthy conflict. It forced those
who wanted to cling to the old ways of doing things to
confront the successes of the new model.
3. GIVE
THE WORK BACK.
Dave
Handler is the founding CEO of a large and growing
10-year-old advertising and design firm. (Like the other
people mentioned in this article, his name is fictional
but he is not.) Beloved and respected by his employees, he
was always available to resolve their disputes.
But as the
firm grew, Handler found himself enmeshed in conflict
after conflict: between design and sales, between
production and design, between print champions and
new-media champions.
Handler
began to understand that if the firm was to grow, these
value conflicts would have to be worked through by the
staff, not decided on an ad hoc basis by himself alone.
He added a
Thursday morning problem-solving meeting to his senior
staff’s schedule. And he started telling disputants to
figure it out themselves and let him know the outcome.
At the
Thursday meetings, team members held back at first. But
once they saw that there would be no retribution for what
was said at the meeting, they began to have the hard
conversations they needed to have for the firm to go
forward.
4. RAISE
THE HEAT.
Sometimes
heat is required to uncover a conflict that, if not
addressed, will compromise an organization’s performance.
Take
Arthur Gaither, the CEO of a huge professional services
firm. He had a particularly loaded issue to bring out into
the open and address: His firm had a tradition of carrying
longtime partners at high compensation levels well after
they stopped bringing in revenue commensurate with their
compensation.
He took
two steps to force partners to make a critical choice.
Were they willing to continue to honor the highly valued
tradition of treating longtime partners generously? Or did
they want compensation to be pegged to productivity for
all partners, regardless of seniority?
First,
Arthur assembled scads of data on productivity. Second, he
convinced the executive team to put a cap on year-end
bonuses for very senior partners whose productivity was
low, even though the firm had had a very profitable year.
Understandably, the affected partners and their allies
were very upset. But these two steps forced a difficult
but crucial firm-wide conversation about productivity,
compensation and, by extension, the future growth of the
firm.
Karen Lehman and Marty Linsky are, respectively, senior
associate and cofounder of Cambridge Leadership
Associates, a leadership development consulting firm. |
