Your Conflict Resolution Illusion That’s Undermining Your Company: The Reason “Collaborative” Outcomes Frequently Create Additional Problems Than They Solve
I’m going to attack one of the greatest sacred cows in contemporary conflict resolution training: the belief that each organizational conflict can and should be settled through “collaborative” outcomes.
This thinking appears sophisticated and compassionate, but after over a decade of training in organizational development, I can tell you it’s often total rubbish that generates worse problems than it solves.
Let me explain the fundamental issue with the “mutual benefit” fixation: it assumes that all disputes involve communication problems or conflicting desires that can be somehow harmonized if people just communicate enough.
With reality, many workplace conflicts involve genuine, fundamental differences in values, legitimate rivalry for scarce resources, or situations where one party actually must to prevail and another party must to fail.
We worked with a large creative company where the artistic group and the business development department were in ongoing disagreement about campaign strategy.
Design people insisted on to develop innovative, award-winning creative content that would establish their creative recognition. Business development teams required solutions that would meet the needs of conservative accounts and protect established business contracts.
Either groups had completely valid concerns. Each viewpoints were important for the agency’s growth.
Management consulted a series of organizational development experts who used weeks facilitating “collaborative solution-finding” sessions.
Such meetings produced detailed “compromise” strategies that appeared sophisticated on in theory but were completely impractical in practice.
For example, they developed processes where every client work would somehow balance “artistic quality” with “account approval.” The consultants created detailed evaluation standards and approval processes meant to guarantee that everyone’s interests were considered.
Their result: creative development timelines that consumed three times more time than previously, artistic work that was mediocre to the point of being ineffective, and customers who were confused by inconsistent communication about campaign direction.
Each departments were more unhappy than originally because neither side was receiving what they genuinely wanted to do their roles successfully.
When six months of this failure, the team persuaded executives to abandon the “win-win” strategy and implement what I call “Realistic Choice Management.”
Rather than trying to act like that all project could simultaneously meet opposing priorities, they created definite standards for deciding when artistic innovation would get precedence and when client satisfaction would be the top concern.
For prestigious customers where the firm needed to maintain long-term contracts, customer satisfaction would take priority.
Regarding newer projects or community campaigns, innovative people would have more autonomy to pursue cutting-edge concepts.
With prospective recognition competitions, creative quality would be the top objective.
All groups understood exactly what the objectives were for each project, what factors would guide direction, and what compromises were being accepted.
Disagreement between the departments virtually ended. Both teams could focus on performing what they did best rather than endlessly fighting about approach.
Customer happiness increased because business development teams managed to clearly communicate campaign strategy and expectations. Design innovation improved on appropriate campaigns because creative staff had specific freedom to create innovative solutions.
The insight: working to develop “mutually beneficial” approaches for essentially conflicting priorities frequently ends up in “lose-lose” outcomes where no one gets what they actually require.
Smarter to be clear about choices and make deliberate, well-informed choices about when various goals will take precedence.
Let me share one more situation of how the “collaborative” fixation creates problems. I consulted with a software engineering company where lead programmers and new staff were in constant conflict about task distribution.
Experienced programmers insisted on concentrating on advanced, important tasks that would develop their skills and increase their industry value.
New staff wanted exposure to complex work to gain their expertise and grow their capabilities.
Finite amounts of high-profile assignments meant that providing more access to new employees necessarily meant reduced assignments for established staff.
Management brought in mediation experts who spent extensive time working to create “innovative” solutions that would somehow satisfy each person’s development aspirations.
The consultants developed complex approaches for “collaborative assignment responsibility,” “coaching arrangements,” and “knowledge development opportunities.”
Not one of these solutions fixed the basic issue: there were plainly not adequate challenging opportunities for everyone to get what they desired.
This outcome: greater confusion in assignment distribution, delayed work distribution, and continued frustration from all sides.
I worked with them implement a clear, performance-focused system for assignment assignment:
Experienced assignments on complex projects would be assigned based on demonstrated competence and experience
Entry-level team members would be assigned specific development opportunities intended to develop their capabilities methodically
Specific standards and pathways were defined for career progression from junior to senior roles
Every employees understood precisely what they had to accomplish to qualify for various types of project responsibilities
Disagreement among experience categories almost disappeared. Entry-level team members could work on reaching defined skill goals rather than competing for insufficient access. Experienced developers were able to concentrate on challenging projects without continuously protecting their access to these assignments.
Productivity and performance increased dramatically across every experience levels.
That lesson: honest, fair allocation often generates more effective results than artificial “win-win” arrangements that try to prevent necessary trade-offs.
Currently let’s examine possibly the biggest problematic component of the “collaborative” fixation: how it enables toxic performers and damages workplace standards.
I worked with a public sector agency where one department was repeatedly not achieving deadlines, delivering poor quality, and generating problems for different departments that counted on their output.
After other departments raised concerns about these delivery problems, administration repeatedly reacted by arranging “collaborative solution-finding” sessions to find “compromise” arrangements.
Those sessions would invariably result in elaborate “workflow improvements” that basically required effective units to compensate for the substandard work of the dysfunctional unit.
For instance, instead of requiring the failing team to reach normal timelines, the “win-win” approach would be to lengthen every delivery deadlines to adjust for their poor performance.
In place of expecting them to enhance their quality output, other departments would be asked to offer extra quality control, support, and corrections to compensate for their poor output.
This system was remarkably unjust to high-performing employees and actively enabled substandard work.
More problematically, it created anger and cynicism among productive staff who felt that their additional contributions was being exploited while problematic employees were being shielded from responsibility.
We convinced administration to scrap the “collaborative” pretense and create straightforward performance management.
Leadership created measurable performance expectations for every teams, with definite consequences for repeated refusal to meet these standards.
This failing team was offered specific resources and a fair timeframe to fix their output. Once they were unable to reach the necessary improvements, appropriate management changes were taken.
This transformation was remarkable. Overall efficiency increased substantially, team tensions virtually disappeared, and worker satisfaction for high staff improved substantially.
That point: true “organizational success” solutions emerge from enforcing fair expectations for each person, not from reducing expectations to accommodate inadequate performance.
This is what I’ve learned after decades of observing businesses fail with ineffective “collaborative” obsessions:
Successful dispute handling requires leaders who are ready to make unpopular calls, establish firm priorities, and accept that rarely each person can get all they desire.
Often the most effective approach is for one party to win and others to compromise significantly. Often the most effective approach is to get rid of individuals who are unable to work productively within organizational standards.
Furthermore frequently the most effective approach is to acknowledge that specific disagreements reflect fundamental differences in values that will not be resolved through dialogue.
Quit working to manufacture “collaborative” outcomes where they don’t apply. Start establishing organizations with clear processes, equitable implementation, and the courage to make difficult changes when collaborative approaches aren’t effective.
Your organization – and your most valuable people – deserve nothing accommodation.
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