Alice looked at the email from Brent and shook her head, thinking “Every time I ask him for information, it’s a fight. Doesn’t he know that he has an obligation to provide finance with his updated projections each quarter? Without those projections, we can’t estimate expense rates and arrange for the appropriate draw down on our line of credit!”
Walking down the hallway, Alice sees Ken, the head of IT. Ken asks her, “Say, Alice, I was wondering how the budget for second quarter is coming. I have some vendors awaiting contract approval for projects that are on critical path for our strategic objectives.”
Alice lets out a heavy sigh and says, “I’m just waiting on Brent’s revenue projections. He’s always the last to turn them in and they’re always late. I’m tired of nagging the sales group to do what they are expected to do.”
Ken nods in empathy. “I know what you mean,” he says.
Meanwhile, Brent is fuming. After the email exchange with Alice, he was racing to a customer meeting that had been scheduled unexpectedly the day before. The customer was considering pulling the company’s product from its distribution due to a competing, inferior product that offered higher margins to the customer. If the customer did so, it would mean a reduction of 15 percent in revenue for the remainder of the fiscal year. Riding with Brent was the account manager for that customer. Brent says, “If we spent our time continually satisfying finance’s insatiable demand for data we wouldn’t have any results to support the estimates!”
Bill looks out the window and says sarcastically, “Maybe finance should be accountable for closing deals! Then they would be the first to know what the projections are!”
This is a classic, and all-too-common, exchange between people in companies who are accountable for sales and fulfillment on one hand, and staff professionals on the other. The irony is that the degree of their dissatisfaction with each other is directly proportional to the degree to which they are motivated to meet their objectives. And the damage that they cause by speaking ill of one another far exceeds the value of contributions that their passion produces.
Why would I say that? Because the conflict will spread to many others who have no direct involvement with the actual point of conflict between Alice and Brent. Ken and Bill are now involved, because they have provided support and validation to Alice and Brent that they are indeed righteous in their indignation. When Ken and Bill interact with each other, or with others, they will carry this unspoken alliance of agreement and frustration, of critical judgment about Brent and Alice, with them in their daily interactions. When they talk to other people who might also have such frustrations with Alice and Brent, they will verbally support their respective colleagues with whom they agreed. The two camps will grow until many people are represented on both sides of the conflict between finance and sales. This segregation and tension creates less cross-functional support, even active resistance, between the parties so separated. And when teams do not go out of their way to assist each other in accomplishing their very different objectives, the organization begins to disintegrate, literally, as co-workers fight with each other. The organization suffers the chronic illness of the equivalent of an auto-immune disease. Things take a lot longer to get done. Groups spend as much time struggling with each other over priorities and decision-making authority as they do in getting and keeping customers.
This destructive dynamic of negative human interaction is called “triangulation,” which means that when person “A” has a conflict with person “B,” he goes to person “C” to complain, who then tells person “D” and “E,” and so on. The human tendency to solicit broad support during a personal conflict, without directly approaching the person with whom the conflict exists, is “normal.” It’s built into our evolution. But it has become a vestigial trait that creates much harm now, even though at one time thousands of years ago it was a beneficial behavior.
I have seen this dynamic repeatedly, frequently, over the years. Every organization suffers from it to some degree. There is only one solution that has any chance of succeeding. That solution is to “honor the absent.”
This means that whenever you are speaking about someone who is not present, you honor their name and their reputation. You talk about them as if they were right there in the room with you. You speak kindly and compassionately about them, even though you may be frustrated beyond reason. You give them the benefit of the doubt. You consciously understand that when you speak critically of someone to a third party, you are damaging the entire organization, because the words you utter will have a life of their own as soon as they leave your lips. And the life they lead will always be destructive to the organization as a whole.
Another scenario could have been that when Alice met Ken in the hallway, and he asked about the budget figures, she could have said, “I still need Brent’s sales estimates. I know he understands the importance of them. He must be dealing with some critical customer issues that could affect those projections. The market has been volatile lately and it is no doubt difficult for Brent to predict the future. I’ll follow up with him tomorrow.”
Brent could have said to Bill, on the ride to the customer, “Finance needs projections to accurately estimate borrowing needs, and I’d love to be able to give them estimates that they can actually count on. They are holding up budgets for our numbers, so let’s make them good ones by closing this customer on keeping our products in their line!”
As soon as infighting begins, through destructive triangulation, the organization is attacking itself. Its inflammatory response damages its own tissue. Honoring the absent is the only therapy that can keep this disease in check.
Friday, February 25, 2011