Senior Team Conflict

Regular readers of my blog should be aware that I’m a big fan of Patrick Lencioni’s writing. Perhaps his most famous book is The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, and I especially like it because of the central role conflict plays as a dysfunction. Do note, however, that it is the avoidance of conflict that is the dysfunction, not the existence of conflict. The best teams, Lencioni argues (and, of course, I agree), have conflict all the time, they just actually resolve it.

There is an article in the June HBR that restates Lencioni’s argument. In “The New Deal at the Top,” Doz and Kosonen argue that the most successful “strategically agile” companies they have studied all have a new model of senior leadership, one where senior executives are much more interdependent, rather than independently running silos. This requires, however, better communication and better conflict resolution at the top, and that means behavior change.

Attractive as the new deal sounds, striking it is never easy, because it requires behaviors very different from those that most executives are comfortable with. That’s why many companies never get beyond making the resolution to change. As the CEO of one large U.S. chemical company describes it, “in the executive committee we have these polite exchanges, everyone agrees publicly, and we leave with a warm feeling of consensus. Nothing happens, and then I hear that as soon as they were back in their offices, some group VPs started complaining about misguided corporate decisions and essentially discouraged their own subordinates form any wholehearted implementation. It’s a case of public consent but private dissent.”

Whenever I describe this dynamic when I am speaking, I always get those knowing, frustrated nods of agreement from the audience. I will say, however, that this is somewhat surprising to me, because let me tell everyone right here and right now: this dynamic is EASY to change.

Comments

[Lisa Junker]

Thanks for this post, Jamie! I'd love to hear more about what you would recommend doing to change this dynamic--because my experience has been that a silo culture can be really deep-rooted and extremely difficult to change. If it can be easy, I'd love to know more about how it can be done!

[Jamie Notter]

Okay, deep-rooted silo culture may not be easy to change (although that's no excuse for not trying!). I mean getting the executives past the "polite exchange" meetings above. People are afraid of putting their conflict out on the table and in my experience, that fear is not really based in experience. It simply isn't as bad as you think it will be. You'll probably have to change some of the typical communication patterns, and that's not purely "easy," but my point is that it is much easier than people think. THey think it will be hard and painful and awful, and when it happens, it's just not that bad.

And I promise to do another post on changing deep-rooted silo cultures!