An article in the recent edition of the Harvard Business Review talks about the need to bring conflict into the workplace. Picking a fight about the future direction for a brand, product, or company can be key in bringing out innovation and a stronger plan.
The article gives you the tools you might need to set the conditions and manage the fight within the organization. Allowing for controlled and open “combat” can let the company challenge assumptions and keep “lemming thought” under control.
An Earnest Fight For The Future
While a company will benefit from the open conversation and honesty that comes with fights, if it is not clear that the winning side has total victory the grudges will lie in wait. This means that the leader must have clear rules on who wins and who loses in the fight. The losers must set the example that once they have lost the fight they will follow without question. The winners, after winning, will not gloat.
We have two examples to draw from here that demonstrate the pros and cons of fighting within an organization. The first is from the fashion industry and the second from history.
“…after the clear winner was chosen the other three fell in line…”
A fashion designer takes her woven sweater design to a Chinese knitting factory. In order to determine the best method in making the sweater, the factory owner assigns four master seamstresses to make the sweater by hand through their interpretation of the design. After one day all four seamstresses came back and shared their knitted product with the designer and the factory owner. After inspection the designer picked one winner. The other three seamstresses matched the winner’s style and duplicated the sweater. The lesson here is that after the clear winner was chosen the other three fell in line and followed the plan of action for the launch of a successful sweater.
“They, the defeated, paid him back through the ultimate boardroom revolt.”
A look at history is strewn with lessons of losers holding grudges and winners gloating over the defeated. We will pick just one for today’s blog, Julius Caesar. One could argue that the civil war between Julius Caesar and the Senate was an organizational fight over power in Rome. Caesar’s victories over the armies of Pompeii Magnus and the Senate were total and complete on the battlefield. Yet, Caesar did not follow the clear Roman rules of dealing with the defeated, which usually meant killing them. Instead he “forgave” them of their offenses and tried to co-opt them.
This did two things. The first is that it did not give the signal of a total victory and second, it made the defeated feel beholden to Caesar and therefore stoking their feelings of revenge. Each action Caesar took after his battlefield victories looked as if he was gloating over the defeated. They, the defeated, paid him back through the ultimate boardroom revolt.
How do you apply confrontation to the betterment of your business?
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