Work Matters

Tag: conflict

  • Leading a Good Fight: Stories and Rules

    If you read Work Matters, or my books or articles, you know that I believe that one of hallmarks of constructive team dynamics are healthy and respectful arguments over ideas.  And I believe it is a hallmark of skilled bosses, especially when it comes to sparking creativity.  For example, I have written about the importance of having strong opinions that are weakly held and fast fights at the  d.school. I continue to dig into this issue in Good Boss, Bad Boss, which has a section in the chapter on what wise leaders do called "Fight Right."  It discusses Karl Weick's lovely advice to "fight as if you are right and listen as if you are wrong," and offers ten guidelines for "How to Lead a Good Fight."

    As a preview, and as point 7 on the list of 12 Things Good Bosses Believe that I am rolling out at HBR, I have new post at HBR called "It's Up to You to Start a Good Fight," which includes some guidelines for leading a good fight.  It also includes this section about one of the heroes of the computer revolution, Bob Taylor:

    I suspect that a lot more of you have heard of Brad Bird than Bob Taylor —
    but Taylor probably has had a bigger influence on your life. The
    researchers he funded and guided in the 1960s developed, among other
    things, ARPANET, the forerunner to the Internet. In Dealers of Lightning,
    author Michael Hiltzik depicts how Taylor conducted meetings among the
    super-smart people whose research his group at the U.S. Defense
    Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) funded:

    "The daily discussions unfolded in a pattern that remained
    peculiar to Taylor's management style throughout his career. Each
    participant got an hour or so to describe his work. Then he would be
    thrown to the mercy of the assembled court like a flank steak to pack of
    ravenous wolves. "I got them to argue with each other," Taylor recalled
    with unashamed glee….. "These were people who cared about their
    work…. If there were technical weak spots, they would almost always
    surface under these conditions. It was very, very healthy."

    Taylor continued the same pattern later as assistant lab manager at
    Xerox PARC, where during a rather magical and now mythical period of the
    computer revolution, researchers developed many of the technologies we
    use everyday including WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) word
    processing, hypertext, laser printing, Ethernet and TCP/IP, to name just
    a few. At PARC, Taylor organized a weekly meeting where a different
    speaker each week (called "the dealer") would propose an idea and try to
    defend against questions and criticisms raised by some of the most
    critical, motivated, and brilliant engineers and researchers on the
    planet at the time. As Hiltzik explained:

    "[I]t was not to be personal. Impugning a man's thinking was
    acceptable, but never his character. Taylor strived to create a
    democracy where everyone's ideas were impartially subject to the group's
    learned demolition, regardless of the proponent's credentials or rank."

    I love that phrase, " Impugning a man's thinking was
    acceptable, but never his character."  I also believe that one of the most important things we can do when teaching people to do creative work is to teach them to participate and lead good fights.  

    I wonder, have you had — or do you know about — other bosses who are especially skilled at leading a good fight?  What else do they — or you — do to make this happen? 

  • Front Stage Vs. Backstage Behavior: A Cultural Lesson?

     I try to understand and respect the differences among cultures, what they mean for how I should behave, and the implications for how well — or badly — management practices from one culture apply to another.  But trying to understand them does not mean that I quite know how to deal with differences as I encounter them in the moment, or even if what I THINK are cultural differences really are differences — or just reflect the usual variation in organizational cultures and human personality that are always present. But I might have learned something in Singapore last week that is a cultural difference — and I would appreciate any comments about if I am right or wrong, and that add nuances that I no doubt mixed. 

    I had the privilege of spending three days in Singapore last week working with leaders in industry and the government on leadership and innovation issues.  In one of the workshops I helped lead, I reviewed various studies and examples showing that constructive conflict is linked to group performance and, especially, creativity and innovation.  If you read this blog, you will see this theme pretty often, as I write about having strong opinions weakly held, fighting if you are right and listening as if you are wrong, fast fights at the Stanford d.school, and this was big theme in the interview we did a couple years ago with Brad Bird of Pixar. All these studies, however, are (I believe) conducted in western countries.  One of the folks I was working with in Singapore commented that open — even if constructive — conflict is something that westerners do, but Asians tend not to do (and indeed although I engaged in some open disagreement, especially with a fellow American academic, there was not much other open disagreement in any of the workshops).

    BUT I am talking about in open — if small — public forums.   In contrast, I spent a lot of time in one on one conversations engaging in quite active debate and (polite) two-way constructive criticism.  Indeed, I would say that I engaged in more argument in one-on-one conversations than I would with a typical American business crowd.   I would also add that these backstage conversations — for the most part — helped improve the workshops and sharpen my thinking.  So here is my hypothesis, that as the famous sociologist Erving Goffman emphasized, there is always a huge difference between front stage and back stage behavior in organizational life… and in this case, the amount and quality of constructive conflict I experienced was similar to what I would expect from a U.S. organization, but the difference is that it all happened backstage.

    My tentative hypothesis here is that there is just as much constructive conflict in Singapore and perhaps other Asian countries as in western countries, but more of it happens in one-on-ones and otherwise behind the scenes.  I suspect that a lot of you out there will say "duh" in response, but I am curious to hear if this seemingly obvious truth is, well, true.   And if it is wrong or partly wrong, why — and any other related insights. Thanks.