Advice for effective management has been showing up in some of the most unlikely places over the past several weeks, or in unexpected guises. Let’s take a look at some of these, leavened with some real advice from some of the best management trainers around.

Clues to communication. The range begins at The Boston Globe, for an excellent piece on “cognitive fluency” and what it means for anyone – from managers to marketers and beyond – trying to make a message connect. It then moves on to Steve Roesler‘s piece on getting your ideas heard – note point numbers one and two, in particular. Then we complete the journey to clarity with a classic memo, courtesy of John Phillips.

Obvious places. Start with this WSJ editorial on the dangers of believing your own PR. It’s a political piece, but the lesson is there to be had, whatever you may think of the choice of this particular object for the lesson. In the same vein, next view this by Steve Tobak at BNET, about key lies managers deceive themselves with.

Now, let’s return to the WSJ for this Fouad Ajami column; again, a political piece, same target. But leaving that aside, consider this sentence from it: “A charismatic leader had risen in a manner akin to the way politics plays out in distressed and Third World societies.” How does that insight, and what follows in the essay, translate to what we see in business? But to return to the subject of communication for a moment, please see this item from The Economist about how some politicians aren’t getting – don’t want to get – this increasingly strongly felt and urgently delivered message from the electorate.

Staying motivated. You will definitely want to see this terrific book review by Aubrey Daniels – and why it’s key message drives him crazy. And speaking of insufferably irritating, please see why forced fun can be much more damaging for a company than you might think, in this essay by Grant McCracken.

Unlikely places. Much has been made, of course, of the late-night host debacle of recent weeks in the US. One WSJ piece argues that it is a rich source of management lessons. Another insists that our very effort to find these in it is a condemnation of our individual and cultural common sense. What’s your view?

Here and there. Before leaving the WSJ, you will want to see this column about how the drive to diversity on boards can actually be quite destructive. Next, please be sure to see what management coach Katy Tynan has to say about handling conflict – well worth your time. Subscribe to her blog while you’re there.

You will surely want to see this from Miki Saxon about the real message in the failure of a football team. This is definitely a transferable lesson.

And finally, please do see this BBC piece about why you might want to be slimed – and what unexpected lessons you can learn even from that.

Enjoy your reading, and have a great weekend – see you soon!

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Technorati Tags: management, advice, trainer, Boston Globe, manager, marketer, message, Steve Roesler, clarity, John Phillips, WSJ, Steve Tobak, BNET, Fouad Ajami, charisma, leader, insight, business, communication, Economist, Aubrey Daniels, Grant McCracken, Katy Tynan, Miki Saxon, BBC

Have you ever negotiated with someone – a potential customer or partner, a boss or colleague – who just can’t bear to say “no?” Desperate to avert an unpleasant confrontation, not wanting to hurt your feelings, and struggling to evade personal responsibility for either of these, this person instead expresses admiration for your plans and support for your proposals.

So off you go, busily filling in details, mobilizing resources, and preparing for implementation.

But when you return to your negotiating partner for their agreed input, or to finalize the deal, misunderstandings and minor objections begin to surface. These are presented with pained expressions of apology, plainly evident discomfort, and genuine appeals for your tolerance and understanding.

You recover from your surprise – everything had been clear; mutual benefits of the collaboration understood and mutual obligations carefully laid out and integrated. But back to the drawing board you go, adapting plans and redeploying assets to accommodate the new understanding of the situation.

But no matter what you do, you can never get this party to take the last step, to commit to action. Rather, you are asked, always with profuse and sincere regrets, to reduce references to and expectations of him or her.

Finally, you realize: there was never an agreement, never any intent to cooperate. Behind the apparent initial approval, and subsequent evasions, was a panicked (although, sometimes, a juvenile and manipulative) determination to achieve a “no” without having actually to say it.

You see this at last, and, frustrated and amazed, drop the matter. Then the other party either pretends the incident never happened or, if pressed about it, portrays it in the most bafflingly self-serving manner.

If this does happen to you, rest assured that it is not an isolated event. It is not related to the project, but to the other party’s unwillingness to deal with what it perceives as potential conflict. If you cannot be caused to uncontroversially drop an unwanted matter when you first broach it, they will just try to outlast you.

And they will. Every time. You don’t win by trying to wear them down, but by being alert to what may really be going on. As soon as you suspect it to be what has just been described, construct and offer a face-saving way out. You may be surprised at the alacrity with which it is accepted. You will certainly find it to be more satisfying for all concerned than persisting in believing that the illusory collaboration will ever materialize.

Best of all, it’s a white lie that saves everyone embarrassment, and you wasted time, effort, and resources.

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Today’s tips: Speaking of unconstructive ways of dealing with disagreement, please see what Miki Saxon has to say about ultimatums and corporate culture.

And if you find that you are making your proposal to a party like the one depicted above, you may wish you had preserved your flexibility to adapt on the go, by avoiding the standard presentation software, and instead using this exciting new invention described by Michael Wade.

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And speaking of subscriptions, ours here are always free! Why not subscribe by email or RSS reader now?

Technorati Tags: negotiate, customer, partner, boss, colleague, confrontation, responsibility, plan, proposal, resource, implementation, collaboration, obligation, agreement, disagreement, Miki Saxon, ultimatum, corporate, culture, Michael Wade

In the midst of political campaigns – particularly in long and arduous ones such as the presidential race now drawing to a close in the United States – it can become difficult to keep our perspective. We all know that similarly distorting and disorienting political dynamics can disturb our clarity at work, as well.

We become so immersed in the close combat of a contest that we forget why we entered into it. We are unable to imagine a satisfactory emergence from it short of our complete victory and the other side’s unconditional surrender.

We forget that we are all in this together. When the battle is done, our opponents – whether victor or victim – will still be our neighbors and, hopefully, our collaborators.

The inherently antagonist nature of a debate – whether about public policy, corporate strategy, or personnel assignment procedure – is designed to highlight not our personal differences, but to uncover and illuminate the numerous facets of the issues over which we contend. It is also worth remembering that it is not merely for our audience’s enlightenment that we debate, but for our own.

John Stuart Mill, in On Liberty, has this to say about suppression of freedom of expression; it is relevant here:

If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.”

That is a great thing about a debate for the debaters as well as the observers. Everyone can win. Whether you persuade or are persuaded, you leave with a deeper and richer appreciation of your position. Even if the arguers sway no one, this result can obtain relatively for each side – or the resulting uncertainty and indecision can serve to drive much-needed further examination and discussion.

But in order to benefit from this, you must be prepared to acknowledge its presence. And the key to doing that is, as in so many things, remembering that it’s not about you. It’s not even about the cause you fight for. It’s about the greater purpose or larger entity that that cause is intended to serve.

The 19th century English philosopher and theologian Richard Whately is perhaps best known today for the following, which incorporates this idea:

Everyone wishes to have truth on his side, but it is not everyone who sincerely wishes to be on the side of truth.”

It is important, in the midst of contentious disagreements over important matters, to pull back from the ranks in which we find ourselves, and recall to mind the communities and organizations both we and our disputants share. Then, perhaps, we can better consider what the truth looks like from that perspective, and introduce the results into the discussion – or, at least, into our own thinking as we contribute to the debate and its aftermath.

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Today’s tips: Speaking of factors to introduce into a discussion, please see this WSJ piece about the role DNA records – or even full genomes – may play in future political elections or executive searches.

And once you’ve used integrated perspective and focus to inform a cause you are determined to promote, please be sure also to view this essay by Steve Roesler about how to introduce something new at work.

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Technorati Tags: United States, debate, policy, strategy, procedure, John Stuart Mill, freedom, truth, English, Richard Whately, organization, perspective, WSJ, DNA, genome, executive, focus, Steve Roesler

As we saw yesterday, the great early 20th century management thinker Mary Parker Follett was a pioneer in the innovative and constructive use of conflict in organizations. She believed they should be resolved by neither domination nor compromise, but rather by integration. However, she was fully aware of the potential obstacles to its use.

A principal one is the presence in a situation of a strong individual leader. Follett saw that “the undue influence of leaders,” is “one of the chief obstacles to integration.” A self-aggrandizing leader may find it preferable, in order to reinforce or strengthen his or her partisan power base, to attempt to obtain an all-out win through domination, even when a clearly preferable, from an organizational viewpoint, integrative solution is available.

The legalistic and adversarial approach to conflict that so often results in what might be called competitive compromise, sometimes as overt as strikes and lockouts, is an all too obvious example of this. Leaders on one or both sides may pursue such approaches to gain limited tactical gains for themselves or their sides, or to better position themselves for the next conflict.

The benefit of using an integrative approach, when feasible, in dealing with conflict is obvious. Domination suppresses conflict, and compromise temporarily removes it. Integration, however, uses conflict to provide the traction that enables organizations to move beyond the conflict to a greater understanding of the organization’s nature and needs, and an optimal means of realizing them.

As we have seen, however, Follett knew that there are occasions when such a solution is not practical (because of, for example, the “undue influence of leaders”), or not feasible. But she also knew that it might not even be optimal. It might simply produce an additional way to perceive and deal with the conflict. Nevertheless, even that has value (if only in strengthening interparty relationships and interactions), and ought not to be missed merely because we are predisposed or driven to adversarial solutions.

It’s worth emphasizing again that Follett promoted integration as a means of dealing with, or (better) of using, a conflict – not of avoiding it. Conflict, properly perceived and exploited, is a potentially positive contributor to the vitality and progress of the organization. What’s more, it isn’t accomplished by yielding one’s interests to those of others – that’s just compromise.

The proper pursuit of integration of differences in order to constructively resolve conflict, according to Follett, “needs just as great a respect for your own view as for that of others, and a firm upholding of it until you are convinced. Mushy people are no more good at this than stubborn people.”

Undoubtedly many of you have heard of this approach as it is applied to negotiations. That is an excellent use, of course. But have you ever thought of it, as Follett did, as an every day organizational asset, with operational and design implications?

Follett even evaluated organizations on the quality of the conflicts they generated, and the constructive use they made of them. How does yours measure up?

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This post is a part of a series. You can learn about and link to the other articles here: Conflict

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Today’s tip: Speaking of leaders and dealing with conflict, please see this WSJ piece about Carl Icahn and Yahoo.

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Technorati Tags: conflict, domination, compromise, integration, leader, influence, power, strike, lockout, organization, negotiation, WSJ, Carl Icahn, Yahoo, Mary Parker Follett

As we have noted, conflict causes great stress for many managers, whether it is resolved through domination or compromise. But the great early 20th century management thinker Mary Parker Follett argued that there is a vastly superior way to treat the issue.

It is the process of integration, wherein a way is found for each side’s ambitions to be realized without the cost of suppressing or restricting those of any other side. This is a creative process that calls for finding new ways to view the conflict, what it is, who the real parties are, what their interrelationships are, and the nature of their collaborative interactions. Follett gave two examples of this which I will relate, here.

The first is a personal dispute she had while reading in a small room in a library. Another person in the room wanted to open the window, and Follett wanted it to remain shut. They resolved the issue by opening a window in an adjacent room, which was not being used.

Rather than simply arguing over the disagreement as it had initially presented itself to them – whether or not to open the window in their room – they discussed the nature of the dispute and the reasons underlying their positions. They learned that Follett did not want the windy weather outside to disturb her, and the other party felt that the room was stuffy.

Next, they considered the possibilities for satisfying both sides without domination or compromise. They looked beyond their immediate environment where the dispute was playing out, and discovered that the adjoining room was empty, and that its window could be opened, satisfying both of them without disturbing anyone else.

Follett also realized that, as generally preferable as integration may be over the other options, it may not always be viable. For example, if there had been no adjoining room, or if it had been occupied by people who wanted the window to remain shut, Follett and her disputant would have been left with no recourse but to find some awkward compromise, or for one to simply yield to the other. Nevertheless, in this case, the two sides succeeded in resolving the conflict creatively by finding a solution that was optimal for both of them. Let’s look at another example.

The classic case of the use of integration to resolve organizational conflict is Follett’s story of a dairymen’s cooperative league’s dispute about how to organize the unloading of carts at a creamery platform. The platform was located on a slope, and was approached by carts from both the uphill and downhill directions. Both the up-hillers and the down-hillers thought that they should have priority, and that the other side should pull over and wait.

The disputants continued to contest the issue within the framework in which it had presented itself to them. Unable to resolve it, they brought in a mediator, who immediately saw that the platform could be repositioned so that each disputing side had uninhibited and simultaneous access to each physical side of the platform. Upon this being pointed out, both parties recognized it as the perfect solution and happily agreed.

We might also be able to see in this example the potential for another difficulty that Follett recognized is often an obstacle to the application of integration. It is an interesting one, of particular interest to us here on these pages. We will discuss it next – see you then!

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This post is a part of a series. You can learn about and link to the other articles here: Conflict

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Today’s tips: Speaking of domination, please see this article by John Leo about intellectual indoctrination on campus (and also for clues as to why it ultimately fails).

And if you’re looking for views to integrate, you’ll want to view this article from the NYT about problems and solutions seeking each other out.

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Technorati Tags: conflict, manager, domination, compromise, management, integration, ambition, Follett, mediator, John Leo, indoctrination, NYT, Mary Parker Follett

We began, yesterday, talking about Mary Parker Follett‘s views on conflict in organizations. She recognized that the most obvious way to deal with it is through compromise. This method enjoys broad support and is widely viewed even today as the most sophisticated and mature approach to the resolution of conflict.

We all recognize that it is often necessary for each side to surrender some of what it wants in order to avoid the risk of losing it all in a contest for domination. This is also sometimes justified as sacrificing the pursuit of our selfish instincts in order to preserve the common good.

Of course, much of modern organizational life is based on the studied and careful application of compromise. Labor negotiations, strategic partnerships and mergers, supply chain – even customer – relationships, all have historically drawn heavily on the use of the principle of compromise.

In fact, its use has become so embedded in the momentum and mind-set of these relationships that it can sometimes be difficult to imagine any other way of engaging in them. When the need is felt to break free of the gridlock of mutual dissatisfaction that compromise is often viewed as being, recourse is usually taken to domination; for example, through strikes or lockouts.

But Follett’s most telling observation about compromise is that it is the method we resort to, “in order to have peace, or, to speak more accurately, in order that the activity which has been interrupted by the conflict may go on.” That is, it is an essentially conservative process.

The work that goes into developing compromise agreements can certainly be very ingenious and reflect great insight about the needs and natures of the conflicting parties, but the process of compromise, itself, is generally not creative; nothing really new results. The conflict is viewed as a blockage which, upon being removed, permits the previous activity to resume.

Compromise constrains the ambitions of all sides in order to preserve the essential features of the pre-existing activity that sustains them all. This might be viewed as the removal of conflict – always temporary and inherently artificial.

Perhaps there is another way. And there is! We hope you will join us next as we examine it.

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This post is a part of a series. You can learn about and link to the other articles here: Conflict

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Today’s tip: Speaking of the rush from compromise to domination, please see this telling piece about intolerance of diversity in the mainstream of political discourse in the United States, by Michael Cobb at his eponymous site. Whatever your own political proclivities, you may recognize dynamics underway at your workplace, of the sort that lead to an aggressively oppressive groupthink.

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Technorati Tags: conflict, organization, compromise, domination, Labor, negotiations, partnership, merger, supply chain, customer, ambition, diversity, United States, Michael Cobb, workplace, groupthink, Mary Parker Follett, creative, conservative

Most of us become anxious at the mention of conflict, and are eager to find ways to avoid or calm it. But Mary Parker Follett had a very positive view of the role of conflict in organizations.

Rather than seeking to eradicate or suppress it, she felt that we should find ways to put it to work for us. Follett illustrated this point by comparing conflict with friction. While it is true, as she conceded, that our work with friction is usually directed at eliminating it, we also study how to understand and exploit it.

A rope and pulley system, for example, simultaneously attempts to remove friction, so that the pulley can turn, and to use friction, so that the rope can transfer energy. The maintenance – even the enhancement – of friction enables motion, produces heat, polishes surfaces.

Conflict, too, can provide us traction to generate constructive energy and motion. It can enable us to identify and study issues of import to the organization. It can help us develop both realistic appraisals of situations confronting us, and decisive responses to them. The prudent application of conflict can even smooth dysfunctional irregularities in organizational design and procedure. But that can only happen if we are willing to embrace and use conflict, and not merely instinctively remove or suppress it.

Follett identified three ways of dealing with conflict: domination, compromise, and integration. Domination is a prominent means of resolving conflict by one side imposing itself, or gaining victory over, the other. This is the suppression of conflict.

Tomorrow, we’ll take a look at Follett’s views on compromise, before returning to some of her specific ideas about how to constructively use conflict in organizations. Please do join in.

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This post is a part of a series. You can learn about and link to the other articles here: Conflict

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Today’s tip: Speaking of conflict, sometimes it seems difficult to suppress the instinct to launch into it. But before rushing into the lists, please see this revealing essay by Cam Beck at ChaosScenario about why you might first want to determine its fundamental source.

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Technorati Tags: conflict, organization, friction, domination, compromise, integration, Cam Beck, ChaosScenario, Mary Parker Follett