Wayne is an accomplished and overburdened senior executive who hates dealing with his direct reports’ conflicts. He once told me that he’d rather have a spike driven into his eye than listen to them complain about each other.
But leaders like Wayne often fail to realize that what appear to be interpersonal conflicts are often just the visible symptoms of deeper, more strategic problems. After all, people generally want to get along with each other. And most of us don’t go to bed plotting how to annoy our colleagues.
In fact, most conflict occurs when well-intentioned people inadvertently frustrate each other from achieving their objectives. When this happens we end up blaming people rather than looking at underlying causes.
As the President of a consumer products company, Wayne was confronted with this situation. His company was implementing an aggressive strategy to derive 50% of profit from new products within five-years. During this time, the national sales force headcount remained relatively flat while a cadre of new brand managers was hired to manage the expanding product portfolio.
But the two groups clashed: regional sales managers criticized brand managers as out of touch with local markets. And they accused them of acting with a level of arrogance that exceeded even their usual cockiness. The marketers grumbled about the sloppiness of new product launches in the field. They complained that regional managers only cared about their personal turf and that they rarely considered the bigger picture.
The irony (to me at least) was that Wayne was complaining to me about both departments. When I suggested that he was acting similarly to his errant vice presidents, Wayne reluctantly decided to act. He scheduled a meeting with his key lieutenants to, as he said, “clear the air.” What he got was something else.
Conflict as a leverage point
I facilitated the meeting in which the groups described their perceptions of each other and took turns validating what they believed was accurate. The sales force was proud to be seen as strong in distributor relationships. But they also admitted their weakness in managing budgets, and being overly protective of their territory. And while the marketing group was seen as strategic, and quite creative, they began to see how they could be viewed as intrusive and over-demanding.
While the “truth” stung, it also helped reduce the tension so they could focus on the business. The group realized that not getting along related more to the challenges of keeping up with unprecedented growth. Perhaps more importantly, they recognized that their go-to-market strategy was flawed.
For instance, they acknowledged a trend toward smaller brands with shorter life cycles. And new product introductions needed local more than nationally driven promotions. Finally, they realized the need for more specialization in the sales force, rather than simply put “more feet on the street.”
Thus a meeting that began as a chance to “clear the air,” ended as a platform to address strategic challenges. In the weeks that followed, joint task forces recommended how the company could re-invent how it launched, marketed and even discontinued products, shifting from an “army” to a “special forces” approach.
On reflection, Wayne realized that the conflict between Marketing and Sales was due to good people trying to succeed when their goals and resources were neither aligned nor up-to-date. Their struggles subsided when the new strategy was implemented, not the other way around.
If you are a senior executive, or even a first line supervisor wrestling with others’ conflict, consider what Wayne learned:
Rob, excellent post. When I worked for Volvo Logistics, blaming between departments was rampant. Nothing was ever done about it, I guess that’s why Volvo Logistics in North America is all but out of business these days.
You make some very good points that can be applied to any relationship. And I’m totally guilty of taking conflict personally. That’s difficult NOT to do in my opinion.
Jason