An article from HBS Working Knowledge “Don’t Listen to ‘Yes’“ where Martha Lagace,talks with Professor Michael Roberto, author of the new book Why Great Leaders Don’t Take Yes for an Answer on why it’s essential for leaders to spark conflict in their organizations, as long as it is constructive.
If people smile, nod, and say “yes” at your company, maybe it’s time to start an argument. According to HBS professor Michael Roberto, the lack of good conflict—constructive conflict—within an organization makes it that much harder to accurately evaluate business ideas and make important decisions….. But conflict does not mean browbeating.
The importance of constructive conflict
Leaders should create a climate of constructive dissent to improve the quality of decision making and to increase the levels of commitment to the decisions being made. Michael Roberto finds that by:
“Keeping conflict constructive helps to build decision commitment, and therefore facilitates implementation”
This is a key insight which is too easily overlooked. Patrick Lencioni in his book ”The Five Dysfunctions of a Team“, reviewed here, made a similar observation on the importance of conflict in teams and the key role that constructive conflict played in teams in building commitment to team vision and goals.
This insights means that to be effective we need to change the way we make important decisions. Encouraging constructive conflict in important decision-making processes increases people’s commitment to the decision and this in turn helps to ensure more effective implementation. Given the critical importance of conflict and dissent in effective decision making and execution leader need to take a more active role in fostering the dissent in their decision making processes.
“Leaders need to recognize that expressing dissent can be very difficult and uncomfortable for lower-level managers and employees. Therefore, leaders cannot wait for dissent to come to them; they must actively go seek it out in their organizations……. Leaders can and should take concrete steps to build conflict into their decision-making processes. For instance, they might ask a set of managers to role-play the firm’s competitors in a series of meetings so as to surface and test a set of core strategic assumptions. Or they might assign someone to play the devil’s advocate so as to ensure that a thorough critique and risk assessment of a proposal has been conducted before moving forward……. By inducing vigorous and open debate, leaders avoid the guessing game of trying to discern whether or not people truly agree with a choice that has been made”
The three cultures of indecision
Looking at organisations culture of decision making Michael Roberto identifies three of what he calls ”cultures of indecision“ that undermine effective decision making in organisations:
The Culture of ‘No’
“Lou Gerstner coined the phrase ‘culture of no’ to describe the situation he inherited at IBM in the early 1990s. In this type of culture of indecision, dissenters essentially have veto power in the decision-making process, particularly if those individuals have power and status. The organization does not employ dissenting voices as a means of encouraging divergent thinking, but rather it enables those who disagree with a proposal to stifle dialogue and close off interesting avenues of inquiry. Such a culture does not force dissenters to defend their views with data and logic, or to explain how their objections are consistent with the organization-wide goals as opposed to the parochial interests of a particular division or subunit. A culture of no enables those with the most power or the loudest voice to impose their will.”
The Culture of ‘Yes’
“When Paul Levy embarked on a turnaround of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, he discovered a ‘culture of yes.’ Levy described the dynamics: ‘People will not tell the truth during meetings about how their department would react to a given proposal. They will sit there quietly and you won’t find out until a week later that they object to something. This behavior had become standard practice. If you object to a proposal, you get quiet during the meeting. Then later, when you leave the room, you undercut the consensus that appeared to have emerged.’ Many organizations have similar patterns of behavior, and the tell-tale signs are quite similar to those described by Levy.”
The Culture of ‘Maybe’
A ’culture of maybe’ exists when companies are highly analytical, yet also quite uncomfortable with ambiguity. They go to great lengths to gather more information and to perform additional formal analysis, in hopes of reducing the ambiguity associated with various options and contingencies. They strive for certainty in an inherently uncertain world—to turn every maybe into a simple yes or no. Indecision and a lack of closure result if managers cannot recognize the costs of trying to gather a more and more complete set of information.
It seems to me that these three cultures are drive by the need to avoid conflict and dissent. The price they pay is in the lack of commitment and execution. The key lesson I take away from this is that conflict, although uncomfortable and messy at times, is a powerful mean of fostering commitment to decisions.
Keep the conflict constructive
To be effective, leaders need to ensure that conflict remains constructive. That is, they must stimulate task-oriented disagreement and debate while trying to minimize interpersonal conflict. Leaders can accomplish this by taking concrete steps before, during, and after a critical decision process.
Before the decision making process
- Establish ground rules for how people should interact during the deliberations.
- Clarify the role that each individual will play in the discussions.
- Build mutual respect.
During the debate
- Redirect people’s attention and recast the situation in a different light.
- Present ideas and data in novel ways so as to enhance understanding and spark new branches of discussion.
- Basic facts and assumptions when the group appears to reach an impasse.
After the decision making process
- Leaders should try to derive lessons learned regarding how to manage conflict constructively.
- They must attend to hurt feelings and damaged relationships that may not have been apparent during the process itself.
The skill of hosting constructive dialogue is necessary for all leaders to take time to learn.
Ensure that the process is fair
Constructive conflict requires a fair decision making process. All people involved in the debate need to feel that the process used to come to the decision was transparent and fair.
“Keeping conflict constructive helps to build decision commitment, and therefore facilitates implementation. But, to build buy-in, leaders also need to devise a fair process. During a decision-making process, some individuals will have their views accepted by the group, while other proposals garner little support. Leading a fair process does not mean trying to satisfy everyone in terms of the ultimate decision that is made. Instead, it means creating a process in which leaders have demonstrated authentic consideration of others’ views. For people to believe that a process is fair, they must:
- Have ample opportunity to express their views and to discuss how and why they disagree with other group members.
- Feel that that decision-making process has been transparent, i.e., that deliberations have been relatively free of secretive, behind-the-scenes maneuvering.
- Believe that the leader listened carefully to them and considered their views thoughtfully and seriously before making a decision.
- Perceive that they had a genuine opportunity to influence the leader’s final decision.
- Have a clear understanding of the rationale for the final decision.”
Make time in meetings for constructive debate
Constructive conflict and debate take time. Debate is one thing that your cannot optimize and make effective by limiting the time available to explore options and for each team member to feel heard.
“Leaders need to be careful about trying to maximize the efficiency of their meetings. In so doing, there may be a pernicious unintended consequence. Agenda overload, coupled with the quest for efficiency, often works against a leader’s best efforts to stimulate debate. Why does efficiency crowd out debate? For some dissenters, it takes some time to gather the courage to express their views or to determine precisely how they would like to articulate their point. For others, they may want to listen to others and gain a better understanding of the issues before offering their views. The rapid pace of the discussion may become discouraging to those who aren’t comfortable ’shooting from the hip’ as soon as a new topic opens.”
Hold people accountable
To hold people accountable require clear rules of engagement and clarity around acceptable behaviour and norms.
“It is very important for leaders to be clear about the way in which they want people to contribute and behave during decision-making processes. People need to understand what is expected of them, as well as what to expect of the leader. But perhaps more importantly, leaders need to maintain discipline over time, holding people accountable if they violate the accepted norms and rules of engagement. If someone clearly engages in personal attacks or withholds a dissenting view only to obstruct the implementation later, they need to be held responsible for such dysfunctional behavior. Leaders may find that such moments are developmental opportunities, where they can help their managers and employees learn and improve from situations of poor performance.”
The need for constructive conflict to build commitment and to drive implementation is a key leadership principle. It’s a skill that’s essential to effective change and execution and as we all know the ability to facilitate change and drive results are priceless in today’s business environment.
Technorati Tags: Comitment, Communication, Management, Debate, Leadership, Decision, Change, Execution, Meetings, Business
Related posts:
John Riley
Pablo
uberVU - social c...
Atsu23 (Atsu Sakaki)
Calvin Bacon
Cassandra
Christine Polewar...
dagnabbit_ (auburn)
davidburkus
donna wells
